


Secrets of Gongmen

by kfppredictions



Category: Kung Fu Panda - All Media Types
Genre: Drama, Family, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2019-06-09 21:45:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15276840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kfppredictions/pseuds/kfppredictions
Summary: Late one night in Gongmen City, the Soothsayer visits a restless Lord Shen in his bedroom. When the goat learns the reason behind the peachick's insomnia, however, she is faced with a decision that could jeopardize her place in the Sacred Flame as court soothsayer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The name 'Secrets of Gongmen' is a spin on the names of the KFP shorts like 'Secrets of the Masters', except this one explores Shen's hypothetical backstory. 
> 
> The prompt came from bits and pieces of Shen's and the Soothsayer's backstory that were planned but not ultimately explored in the films. The name was partly inspired by [this post by infini-tree.](http://infini-tree.tumblr.com/post/160048098141/today-on-things-i-didnt-do-on-time-the-most) If you're a fan of the Soothsayer or pretty much anything KFP-related, I recommend checking out her blog.
> 
> Fan art by Amessicle and Koklico has also been a good source of creative energy. 
> 
> Reading ThePseudonym's story [Litost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219104) was a catalyst to actually start working on this project.

“Long ago, much before the attack on the panda village, I was the nanny of Shen. These were the most fulfilling days of all. They were certainly the happiest, even looking back to them from such an advanced age. However, one mystery the Universe has not yet revealed to me is how that purity and innocence of youth can give way to such hatred and violence.

It is on the possibility that [such a] revelation is not intended that I study the story of Shen. It is on that possibility that I write my histories.  
  
These are my belongings: a cane; a bronze tripod; a stool; an old incense bowl; a sheet; this inkstick; this brush, and these histories.  
  
Legacy aside, these are the physical things I will leave behind.”  
  
\- MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF THE SOOTHSAYER OF GONGMEN

* * *

It was evening on the day before the much-anticipated Mid-Autumn Festival in Gongmen City. The last beams of yellowed evening light poured through the windows of the lower Gongmen Palace, giving the young Lord Shen’s room a heavenly glow. Everything the sun washed over was shimmering as if it wasn’t really there, making edges and silhouettes indistinct as they mixed together in a golden haze. The dreamy effect soon faded, however, as the sun sank below the southwestern fortress wall. Shen watched from his bed as the room regained sharpness and depth. He blinked a few times as his sight adjusted.

The room had a high ceiling and a wide-open floor. The walls formed a perfect octagon with large, vermillion pillars at each vertex. Upon one wall was the entrance—towering doors engraved with golden flames and spirals—and on the one opposite were Shen’s sleeping quarters. There lay a fine bed covered with red silk, framed by sturdy hardwood and gold.  
  
The other six walls accommodated Shen’s furniture and useful items. To his right, one wall had an armoire and a dresser for his robes and regal outfits. Two adjacent walls on that same side accommodated shelves packed with scrolls and a rug on which they were unrolled, all situated below a detailed map of China and its Imperial boundaries. A more detailed map of Gongmen and its surrounding pseudo-feudal possessions hung beside it two weeks ago, before his mother, Lady Zhen, assured him that it was of more use to Guard Commander Antelope than him.  
  
To Shen’s left was a wall for meditation and another for physical training. Trinkets, toys, and other personal items were stored throughout a table and two large shelves on the final wall. The space was small enough to fit between the two cornering pillars there, making it seem isolated compared to the rest of the room. It was apparent to the peachick, too, that empty spots dotted the shelves. This was most obvious towards the lower brackets—some of the figurines there even stood alone. Still, it was a space that Shen valued his authority over; the figures _were_ arranged quite meticulously. Old generals and famous warlords were placed beside each other in strict compliance with historical accuracy. For instance, Pirate Captain Ming had no business standing next to Admiral Boar. Both were men of the sea, true—but when Ming was learning to walk, Boar was just a legendary pile of bones at the bottom of the ocean.  
  
Retreating rays of sunlight crept across the floor as Shen was unable to will himself to sleep. His gray eyes just seemed to scan around for something in particular to stare at. He would focus on an object—fixate on its shape, its shadow, its silhouette—but would not know exactly what it was in front of him. A decorative bronze plate caught his eye, the peachick tracing his stare across its perimeter and stopping momentarily at every other decorative indentation. To him it did not seem a plate on a wall so much as an inkblot dabbed haphazard on an otherwise empty sheet of silk.  
  
Or a shield. Perhaps a gong.  
  
As Shen stared and stared, he found himself wandering into a daydream; he imagined the sounds of banging drums, gongs, and stomping feet. He imagined the heat of the sun and the somewhat putrid smell of the central city. In his mind he envisioned a phalanx of antelope dressed in the blue ceremonial garb as they filed through the streets. Peasants, merchants, guards, and nobility were united in the festivities of the harvest season. Shen pictured himself in the center of it all, now raised high above the city as he stood beside his mother and father.  
  
_In tradition there is harmony,_ his imagined father leaned to tell him. _And that harmony is what we must preserve._  
  
For a moment, Shen found himself back in his room. His attention shifted to the pillar at the left of his door. Then to his map of China. He focused on Gongmen for a second, then looked east to the map’s stormy ocean. But he could hardly recognize those things around his room, for again he felt mentally transported to the center of his city. There, he imagined children hanging lanterns. Pigs, rabbits, sheep—all mingling in the city as they acted out his father’s _harmonious tradition._

All of this under him, mother, and father.  
  
_Even in times of strain do we celebrate,_ his dream father continued, _for the people must know that they are secure. We celebrate in the face of rebellion. We celebrate in the face of our enemies’ schemes. This will be our strength, our security. I tell you, there is no cutting corners with the festivities, Shen. If you do not understand these things, you do not understand your own people—and neither will they understand you. Move with grace and power. Grace and power. Remember those words as you move._  
  
Baritone and commanding was the voice of Lord Feng, an echo certain of its convictions.  
  
Eventually Shen’s fickle gaze settled on a mirror below the map of China. The peachick was then brought out from his dream-trance by the image of his own reflection. It was the reflection of a frail peachick—a bulbous head on a pencil-thin neck. The only color distinct from his white feathers were his gray eyelids, brows, and rounded beak. Even his frilled crest lacked pigment. What little tail coverts he had developed by then were plain as the rest, barren of the natural eyespots of a peacock. A small frame; a hint too small for his age. But nothing was physically typical about him, a comment he’d often overheard from his doctor… or, at least, his _official_ doctor. Not that _he_ was doing the legwork of monitoring Shen’s well-being.  
  
These thoughts were unimportant, though. They did not matter. They did not get Shen any closer to unconsciousness.  
  
Snapping out of it, the peachick closed his eyes with a sigh.  
  
_First to nest is sure to rest,_ Shen recalled to himself. _A childish mnemonic. I’ve proven it wrong so many times before._  
  
He stood, scraped the sheets flat, and turned to face away from the room. Then he sat himself back down again.  
  
_First to nest is divest of rest,_ Shen thought. He gave a little chuckle, relaxing his eyelids from a forced squint to a gentle shut. _Better, yes, but it certainly doesn’t stand on its own, not perfect yet. It will do for now, but I’ll have to add to it later._  
  
A moment of relaxation arrived with the thought; his crude parody of the saying was a good distraction from the moment’s unease.  
  
That is, before he felt his mind wander uncomfortably again. Wandered to the boring now, the fretful tomorrow—back to the view of his city from above, back and forth and again.  
  
When Shen did not like these thoughts he placed his focus back on the mnemonic—how else to corrupt it?  
  
Words and rhythms danced around in his noggin, all flowing with contempt for the original saying. The exercise was enough to get the peachick’s muscles relaxed and his eyelids loosened up. It kept his mind away from all the worry. At last, Shen found himself comfortable—or at least distracted enough to give that wandering mind a rest.  
  
But as evening turned to night, Shen was trapped in this strange state between wakefulness and rest. All he could do was lay in the darkness as his mind kept turning, turning, sinking, rebounding between the calmness and the worry.  
  
Despite the unrest, Shen found himself dreaming. They came to him three times, each interrupted by an intrusive bout of wakefulness.  
  
The first time he dreamed he was with a figure on a merchant’s boat, sailing away from Gongmen Harbor with a hull full of the city’s finest bronzeware. The load was so heavy that it pulled them down, sucking ocean water over the edge. Shen pleaded for the merchant to shuttle enough cargo to keep them from sinking, but he just kept sailing on. Even the lighter items were too heavy for Shen to lift himself. He darted awake at the sensation of water enveloping his neck.  
  
The second dream that came to him was in the snow. A boy was running from him, some mysterious figure. It was happy running, he thought. He wasn’t running out of fear—it seemed like a game. A race, or maybe tag. Shen yelled for the boy to slow down but his voice was too quiet. No matter how loud he shouted, all he could manage was a muffled cry of distress. He could not draw in a breath nor let one out, lungs cruelly paralyzed. Shen eventually caught up with the boy and kept running past him. Why Shen didn’t stop to say hello, he did not know. Shen kept running until he was so far away that he couldn’t see the boy at all. Just white snow. The cold and the wind. Just the color white.  
  
Shen’s final dream was of the evening after a great celebration in Gongmen city. Colorful lanterns stuck out in the night, lining the roads and the alleyways with a gentle periodic flicker. A path flanked by red lanterns led Shen to a bridge overlooking the harbor. From there he could see his mother and father standing further down towards the ocean… on a pier? Some platform. Shen’s father motioned for him to join them, and he felt then that something cosmically important was about to happen which needed him as a witness. Something of ritual significance. Something of importance to his maturity. He looked out into the far harbor and saw a merchant’s sailboat capsize and sink below the water. The horizon was washed away in a haze of waves as if the sky had become the ocean.  
  
Splashing, thrashing, sinking, darkness—nothing.  
  
It seemed a familiar sensation. This was more frightening to him than the feeling itself.  
  
Shooting his neck up from his pillow, Shen inhaled with wide eyes and made for sure that he wasn’t drowning.  
  
There again was his room, now visible only by the glow of blue moonlight. The peachick’s head fell back to the bed with a sigh carrying both relief and disappointment. Relief that he was safe; disappointment at the tightness in his chest. That right there was the body telling the mind that it was to remain awake for the rest of the night.  
  
_The bare minimum,_ Shen thought. _Just enough rest so that the body will accept no more._  
  
He looked to the ceiling.  
  
_No more willing it. What I have will have to do._  
  
Shen’s moonlit pupils darted down to his door as it creaked open with someone’s gentle footsteps behind it. He shoved his body back to a sleeping position and shut his eyes, deciding to listen for the identity of his intruder.  
  
_Mother,_ Shen thought. _Or it could be her. Probably her._  
  
The footsteps were those of the Soothsayer, no doubt—tips and taps of hooves, slow and decisive, hard yet gentle. The Soothsayer nodded in thanks to one of the guards outside, stepping in and easing the door shut. She glanced at Shen’s sleeping figure and moved to the center of the room.  
  
Shen shifted in his pretend-sleep to spice up the act, wondering silently why the Soothsayer stopped moving. Then, he heard her shuffle over towards his dresser.  
  
_Why?_  
  
The mystery demanded his attention—he had to open an eyelid, just enough to make out complex motion. She just kept standing there, facing away from his bed and fidgeting her arm periodically. Stroking her beard, probably—but it was hard to tell, as she was shrouded in a mixture of obscure shadows.  
  
The Soothsayer quit fiddling with her beard and became as motionless as Shen. As a precaution, Shen closed his eyes and opted to just listen for her next movement—but instead he heard the goat clear her throat.  
  
“Oh, what a predicament,” the Soothsayer said as she resumed stroking her beard. “Rest without rest is more like a chore, eh-heh-heh.”  
  
She smiled in reminiscence, looking at a place on Shen’s map northwest of Gongmen and south of a great desert, mountainous and lush.  
  
“When I was a kid,” the Soothsayer said, ”maybe your age, then—I had trouble getting to sleep almost every night. So many dreams, and no one could explain them to me. But I did not care about their significance, see—I just wanted them to go away.”  
  
Shen opened his eyes and raised his neck, brushing his wings over his face to repel the unadjusted blurriness of the night. He watched his nanny stand with her back turned.  
  
“How did you know I was…?” Shen began to ask in a quiet voice.  
  
“Ah, yes.” She held her arms out and waved them once like a shaman before a curious village. “The universe told me that you were feigning rest…”  
  
Shen opened his mouth to speak, but all he could vocalize was an uneasy croak. The Soothsayer responded with a little tap of her right hoof, pointing to the mirror beside Shen’s armoire.  
  
They turned and met each other’s blue reflection in silence.  
  
A self-satisfied smile grew across her face; Shen’s expression turned unamused and kind of peeved.  
  
“Or perhaps I just saw you watching me in the mirror,” the Soothsayer informed Shen of what he had just deduced. She turned to face him with a warm smile.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Shen sighed.  
  
“What am I doing here?” The Soothsayer cleared her throat again. “I wanted to check on you, Shen.”  
  
“You knew that I wasn’t resting well.”  
  
“There's a hunch you get after so many years," the Soothsayer said. “Rest is a valuable thing for one your age. If you have worry on your mind, you cannot let it eat you up, even it seems so..." She craned her stout neck to the ceiling as her mouth hung open. “…inevitable.”  
  
Shen peeked up to see what the Soothsayer had seen but found only a ceiling.  
  
“You knew I was dreaming, too,” he said.  
  
The Soothsayer raised a thinning eyebrow. “Were you dreaming?”  
  
Shen remained silent, expectant. The Soothsayer took a breath and looked back at the map.  
  
“When I was told that my dreams were uncurable, I was at first distraught,” the Soothsayer said. “I’ve told you all this before, haven’t I?”  
  
Shen nodded in his impatience. “The story of how you discovered your prescience.”  
  
“It was strange, Shen—and still is strange. My family had never born a seer. The elders were at first hesitant to advise my parents, and who could blame them? Why would the child of a peasant farmer be gifted so?”  
  
Her big, yellowed eyes wandered around as she told the story.  
  
“Visions of things before they came to pass… voices from the future, sights, scents, even unimportant details—an ant crawling on a leaf, the direction of the wind at some place at some time, a blemish upon an old pig’s face… all of it—I dreamed it every night, before any of it came true. So often would there come a dream of something grim, only for it to happen the very next day. Thus, I learned of a fire that took Granny’s home a day in advance. Now, that was anxiety—that was what kept me up at night. The inevitability was terrifying as I came to understand that what I was experiencing were premonitions…”  
  
She turned to face Shen, slow and easy.  
  
“But just as well, I came to realize that those premonitions were not inevitabilities, even if they seemed that way at first. They were only guideposts toward the future; what might be, what might not be, but certainly not what _has_ to be. With my dreams I could see the future—and influence it. Granny Su wouldn’t have made it out if it weren’t for this realization. I remembered from the dream that she was sleeping in the house as the fire raged on, sat down in her rocking chair. I went inside, and… there she was, sleeping sound as a baby.”  
  
Silence again. The guard outside the door—his muffled cough must have been waiting for the goat to finish her story.  
  
“Do you still have them?” Shen asked.  
  
“No,” the Soothsayer said. “Soothsaying becomes more of a technique with age.”  
  
Shen paused, scraping the sheets with a talon.  
  
“What are you doing here?” he repeated with an undertone of disinterest.  
  
The Soothsayer nodded in resignation from her tale and walked just beside Shen’s bed, bringing her previously obscured figure into focus. The goat’s long, drooping face was weighed down by a pair of horns just now beginning to twist with age. Everything about her seemed to hang low like it was tied to a heavy weight; it was as if her ears, sleeves, head, and jaw all experienced more than gravity. Indeed, the Soothsayer’s waning youth could be seen all over; her shimmering fur was something between the color of dirt and the color of ash; her teeth were between straight and crooked; her bug-eyes were nearly halfway outside her skull.  
  
“I want to know what troubles you tonight,” she said. “You must have a lot on your mind.” The Soothsayer set her hoof on Shen’s bed and looked him in the eye, familial concern in her expression. “I am not just here to tell stories; I am here to listen, Shen.”  
  
Shen shifted his gaze elsewhere in discomfort as he swallowed nothing. He waited for her to speak but the goat held patient, looking away from Shen so as not to put him through embarrassment. In the silence, the tension in his chest eased and he gathered his thoughts on what he ought to say.  
  
“Tomorrow,” Shen began carefully. “I am worried about tomorrow—the Mid-Autumn Festival.”  
  
“Of course,” the Soothsayer said. “It is a great occasion. Lords do not usually participate in the formalities until age 16. Your father has much faith in your maturity.”  
  
“Yes. Faith,” Shen half-agreed. “You’ve seen us rehearsing. Father says that it is not a thing to be taken lightly. He says that the festival is my first true opportunity to make an impression on the people—my future subjects.”  
  
The Soothsayer noted Shen’s bleak and serious tone. In that little observation, she had to stop and consider just how quickly he was changing with age. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made him laugh. It felt like forever since she’d even seem him smile. Where was the little peachick she’d nursed back to health? What happened to her little Shen?  
  
She’d have turned back time if she had the power. She’d live in that past, forever and ever and ever, rocking little Shen in her arms. But the Soothsayer knew that such thoughts were an emotional pit—just this idealized dream of the past that would never come true again. This past she _had_ lived but would never live anymore. Something which would be considered, pondered about, fondly remembered… but never felt as it was before. This prize always hidden behind a curtain—this dream of satisfaction that was never coming.  
  
_Why does mine have to be the art of the future?_ she wondered.  
  
“You do not sound at all worried about making a _bad_ impression, dear,” the Soothsayer said. “You’ve rehearsed more than enough for the occasion. By now you wouldn’t be out of place organizing the festivities yourself.”  
  
Shen nodded. “I know. The festivities do not worry me, and neither does making an impression on the people. I have confidence that I can… comport myself.”  
  
“Then what is it about tomorrow that worries you so?” The Soothsayer’s hand remained on the bed as she leaned closer to Shen.  
  
“You know what it is that worries me so,” Shen charged.  
  
The Soothsayer inhaled, exhaled, her crescent nose flaring gently. She held back a frown. “I cannot read your mind, my dear—but still I try, eh-heh-heh.”  
  
_You try and you succeed,_ Shen thought. _But I cannot be angry at you. For me you have done so much._  
  
“Tomorrow itself does not worry me, rather,” Shen said. “No. What it represents does worry me.”  
  
Shen planned to end his sentence there, but he knew that dancing around the issue was a hopeless strategy with his nanny.  
  
“How things have been… going,” he continued. “Yes, following a trend. Father desires a lord, but he sees in me… unlordly behavior. He also sees in me great potential and maturity. He sees in me an understanding of the manners expected of a lord. He thinks highly of those things. Yes. But his… plans for me—my education, my activities, my language, who I am to speak with—they have become rigid and uncompromising. Tomorrow is part of that. He… pushes me, harder than he must. He wants to accelerate things when they are already…”  
  
“…so matured,” the Soothsayer finished. “Shen, what your father sees in you is potential greater than himself. Of course, he does not always express this how he ought to. Nobody’s parents are perfect. But know that your father only pushes you so that you may achieve what he knows you’re capable of.”  
  
The Soothsayer’s words echoed in Shen’s mind as if they were spoken by Lord Feng himself, irritation needling at his cheeks and brows.  
  
“If you were in my father’s position,” Shen began, “would you deny me the right to speak to someone based on their… status?”  
  
The Soothsayer paused, thought carefully about an answer. Shen cut in before she could get it out.  
  
“Would you throw out my belongings because they are too… childish? Too common?”  
  
“Shen,” the Soothsayer only began.  
  
“Would you have me rehearse some unimportant ritual… twenty-three times in a week… for some unimportant _celebration_ … simply because I do not wear the appropriate enthusiasm?”  
  
Shen shook his head and looked out the window. He gave a muted, cynical chuckle.  
  
The Soothsayer took a cautious step towards Shen, placed a hoof on his shoulder. Shen did not immediately turn to face her; his gaze sank into the moonlight as its source passed through the narrow sliver between the fortress wall and his windowsill, tracing his eyes silently around its circumference.  
  
_You would do none of those things,_ Shen thought. _What right do I have to speak to you that way?_  
  
A moment of silent tension passed before he snaked his neck around to meet her.  
  
Both wore melancholy on their face, each apologetic to the other. It was the purest form of sympathy—silent, mutual solidarity exchanged between the two, if only for a moment. The seer goat knew that she could likely not do much to influence Shen’s predicament; the young Lord knew that the Soothsayer deserved none of his anger. And each knew that the other understood these things.  
  
“I wouldn’t,” the Soothsayer murmured. “Shen, you know I wouldn’t.”  
  
Shen felt even closer the Soothsayer’s hoof upon his silken shoulder. It felt like a bridge connecting their spirits. He just nodded, shut his beak tight, watched those yellowed eyes as they watched his.  
  
Emotions flooded his chest with pressure, soon creeping up to his throat as a sore tingling sensation. Something in their shared gaze spawned a building emotional reaction within him; for all Shen knew, she had cast a spell to bring him to tears, and it seemed to be working.  
  
Staving off a sob, Shen closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath.  
  
“Shen,” she repeated, lowering herself to him. With a gentle motion the Soothsayer opened her arms, bending to him for a careful embrace.  
  
But Shen, not realizing the offered hug, shifted far outside her grasp as he turned away in shame, wiping at his eyelids to eschew the gathering moisture.  
  
The Soothsayer just grasped at nothing. Her arms floated above Shen’s bed as they wrapped around thin air. They were kept suspended there by a severe want to console the restless peachick; they were lowered only by a grim acceptance that the embrace was somehow not meant to be.  
  
_Why not?_ The Soothsayer peeked up at the heavens with a hidden scowl, idly pulling at her sleeves.  
  
She swallowed and brushed her robes off, trying to rid herself of a growing dissatisfaction within her gut. It could not be brushed away—no, for she knew it to be the beginnings of a premonition. The feeling carried with it an undeniable cosmic significance, a portent for the future. It was like a poisonous seed planted within her flesh, just now spreading its roots. And much to her distress, the Soothsayer knew that it was not going away anytime soon.  
  
Shen raised his neck and faced away from the Soothsayer. Going by his breathing—shaky, sniffly, and quiet—it was clear he had just finished crying. He regained his composure and crept back to the side of the bed with the Soothsayer.  
  
“What do I do?” Shen asked, yet his flat tone betrayed that he knew there was no challenging his father’s mandate.  
  
The Soothsayer plucked a blanket from a bedside table and draped it over Shen’s back. Taking one end of the sheet in her hoof, she leaned to dry Shen’s tear-damp cheeks, dabbing his feathers gently. Shen suppressed his embarrassment at the gesture and just let it happen. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply as the Soothsayer wiped his face.  
  
“With your father, you must hold patient that his ways are tempered,” she said. “Leading a city is no easy task—and that’s not even considering recent tensions with the people. He takes the weight of the world upon his back, trying to manage these things alone. One cannot guess how much pressure he endures.”  
  
_Would that I could show Lord Feng the error of his ways—what his actions will reap,_ the Soothsayer thought. _But an unsolicited premonition would not go unpunished, backwards as that is. The ensuing chaos—would it disrupt the accuracy? Ah, if only they understood the limits of this wretched gift, how they twist it against itself._  
  
The Soothsayer set the damp end of the sheet down. She straightened the red silk over the peachick’s feathers and made it comfortable as could be.  
  
“For now, you must rest yourself,” she said. “A peachick your age needs all the rest he can get, as you know.”  
  
The moment the blanket draped over him, Shen felt comfort return once more to his body, although this time it had a permanence about it. It was mystical how quickly the Soothsayer could control these things about a person. Something in her touch, her temper—it was calming and assuring.  
  
Shen breathed in, breathed out, sinking into his bed. Now he was snug.  
  
“Don’t you remember how quickly I used to be able to put you to sleep?” the Soothsayer recalled aloud.  
  
Shen replied with an embarrassed sigh.  
  
“Why, all I had to do was hold you, rock you, and sing you lullabies—simpler times. I remember there was one that always worked… almost instantly, of course, eh-heh-heh. Do you remember, dear?” The Soothsayer stroked her beard, racking her mind for those first lyrics.  
  
Shen continued to ignore her, digging the tip of his beak into a cushion as an annoyed squint stretched from either side of his face.  
  
_Of course_ he remembered the lullaby.  
  
The Soothsayer walked beside his head, reached out to place a hoof on his back, and stroked it. She could tell that Shen did not mind the contact, judging by his limp, sagging shoulders.  
  
Her mouth hung ajar as she watched Shen, lower jaw protruding slightly with the early signs of an age-developed underbite. The room rang in silence as she recalled the words, the tempo, the tune…  
  
Taking note of the guards outside the door, the Soothsayer began the lullaby in a voice hushed enough so that only the two of them could hear it;  
  
_‘Falling now our golden sun_

_says goodnight to blue moon._

_Day gives way, another one_

_will say hello so soon.’_

Shen was already drifting into unconsciousness by the time the Soothsayer finished. A primordial part of his brain was spellbound by the song, sinking into comforting darkness as the world closed around him. No more worries. No more anxiety. No biting dreams.

Just the darkness.

The Soothsayer bent down and gave Shen a little kiss on the forehead. The action brought with it a rush of memories from years ago—all those days spent taking care of the little fowl.

_Why does mine have to be the art of the future?_ she wondered again.

Finally, the Soothsayer turned to leave.

Her hooves tapped across the floor and out the door, fading away into inaudibility. She greeted a different set of guards on the way out and wished them a goodnight.

But as she walked through the grand hallway—engulfed now by a sea of indistinct shadows—the dark seed from before pulsed a foreboding rhythm. Beating between each footstep, out of sync with her body’s own natural harmony.

_Must I intervene in family matters?_ the Soothsayer pondered. _Must I take our great Lord to task, unsolicited? What is the worst outcome? Replaced—and my reputation disgraced. That I am willing to give for Shen, but I doubt Lord Feng would heed the nagging advice of the Soothsayer of Gongmen. Certainly not with the wolf crisis looming overhead—he may think me senile. In his eyes, such_ drama _would be a drop in the storm compared to his approaching strife._

She paused before an all-encompassing shadow at the end of the hall. Now she was a speck in the hugeness of the Grand Halls of the Sacred Flame.

_This feeling,_ she wondered, _does it fear action or the lack thereof? Does Shen feel it too?_

The Soothsayer’s head sank on her lumpy shoulders as she disappeared into the night.

Shen, meanwhile, felt his thoughts melting away quickly, mixing together and swirling down a mental drain—except for one.

_Does she truly see my dreams?_ he wondered as his last thought was consumed by the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

“It is an incorrect question to ask if Shen ever truly cared for anyone. There is not a soul in this world without care for another, even when it is not obvious. The correct question is, who was that care for, and how did it change with time? How did it begin? How did it grow? How did it fade? Seldom are these things explored about a tyrant. Even a novice of contemporary history would do well to understand the bonds between Shen and those around him, familial or not.

First, we will explore an example unknown to most; the so-called Boss Wolf. His presence in the tale has, like so much else, fallen victim to that degenerative filter called oral tradition.”

- FROM “ANALYSIS OF LORD SHEN” BY THE SOOTHSAYER OF GONGMEN

* * *

In the darkness of the early morning, a cool breeze swept above the peninsula that was Gongmen. The wind snaked its way through the city like a wandering spirit. Into the streets and alleys of the western shore it carried the chilling moisture of the ocean, precipitating on low-set rooftops, ships, and coastal structures. The brunt of the breeze was, however, diverted by the curvature of gabled rooftops. Smooth, slate gray tile permitted the passage of the wind above, so that by the time it reached the city interior, it was only the quietest whisper of a breeze. It brushed paper lanterns strung across the roads and whipped at the flames of oil lamps set out for the night.

For the inhabitants of the few towers that climbed above the cityscape, the wind was more than a whisper. It was an ambient whirring, ushering in the periodic creaking of wooden beams and supports—the jingling of a latch here, the wobbling of a shutter there. It was soothing to the sleeping subjects’ ears. Those accustomed to it found the noise more relaxing than silence.

Below the Tower of the Sacred Flame, deep within the halls of Gongmen Palace, those noises soothed the sleeping Lord Shen. Now he had sunken into his bed, one wing sprawled out, half-on his side. In that moment, his posture was not at all noble. Hours ago he had fallen asleep in a sitting position with all the poise of a Peacock lord, but through the night that had all crumbled away.

Sloped over now—thinking of nothing and worrying of nothing—Shen was in a state of pure relaxation. His neck draped over his pillow and fit to its slope. His beak was a hint open. All over, his feathers were ruffled and uncouth. Not the most graceful position, but Shen had not a care in the world. All that his mind wanted was the silence and the darkness. In that, there was no worry or doubt. There was no sense of time or place. Indeed, there were no thoughts of the Mid-Autumn Festival waiting to ambush at wakefulness.

But something had begun to penetrate that veil of sleep. Something—a thumping, a scratching, a tapping… something which drowned out the rhythm of the wind. It was the only sensation he was presently aware of, carving its way into his domain of unconsciousness. It began as a series of sounds, but as his mind was disturbed from comfort, the sensation became more intrusive. Now it was a vibration. He could feel each thump through the bed. He could feel the grit of a scratch against wood.

Shen found it odd, if not unnerving, for the sound was faint like it came from outside. He picked out the brushing of a back against the wall behind him. He noted, too, the scraping of footsteps against clay roofing. Then it became the unlatching of shutters at the window beside his bed.

It finally clicked with him; someone was entering his room through the window.

The last shreds of sleep were torn away by the necessity to investigate, forcing Shen’s body up and out from the covers. He sprang forth and tumbled through the air for a lack of coordination. Shen fought to rid his mind of tiredness as he steadied himself with his wings. He measured the current of the air, seamlessly adjusting his wingspan to account for an imbalance in pressure. Peafowl instincts kicked in to guide him down to the floor.

He came to a sliding stop in front of the window and presented his side to the intruder, making his frame as large as possible. One leg out front, one behind, wings open wide at his sides. His body was filled with all the fight of a compressed spring.

But the shadowy intruder was unphased by the peachick’s challenge.

Before Shen stood a thick-framed pillar of an individual with a head’s worth of height on him. The figure was canine in nature—hefty arms hung at their sides, loose and relaxed despite their evident power. Sloping up from their puffed out chest was a neck thick and stout like the trunk of an oak tree. Its gentle upward taper presented the triangular head of a wolf; a pair of pokey ears and a pointed snout framed the corners of the canine’s smiling face. Those pale blue eyes were wide and aware.

Despite the wolf’s imposing figure, Shen found himself relieved. He retracted his fighting stance and stood without the tension in his joints.

Yes, that smile was one of innocence, youthful and pure in its intentions. And, indeed, he recognized the wolf; a little pink bite out of his left ear was familiar.  He recognized the two fangs that poked out from his lower jaw and hugged his upper lip. Around his torso was the usual tattered robe; it was brown and sleeveless and tied to his waist by a piece of rope. Patches and repairs could be found all over the timeworn garment.

If Shen had to sum up the boy in one word, he’d choose  _toothy._ A crude description, but there was not a thing about him that wasn’t crude. It would account for that permanent toothy grin the boy wore. Crude, too, was the dirt, dust, and grime that covered his fur.

Shen scanned around the room as a precaution and took a step forward. He peered up at the friendly wolf cub and raised an eyebrow.

“Cheng?” Shen asked, pleasantly surprised.

“Yuh-huh,” Cheng huffed in a scratchy voice, loud and full. He bent down with a paw on his knee and pointed to the open shutters. “Man, you wouldn’t believe what kind of climbing it took to get up here! I’d rather have to climb the great mountains of the West-!”

Shen rushed to quiet Cheng, unfurling a wing to place it at the tip of his snout. He shot a glance at the entrance of the room as he froze, eyes wide and attentive to the situation. Shen watched, listened… Cheng himself stood frozen a second before shutting his snout tight.

The cub and the peachick kept still. Presently the only sounds were those of the shutters whining against the wind and Cheng breathing through his nose. Shen lowered his wing but remained close to the wolf, turning to face him with a stern look.

“Quiet, now,” Shen whispered. “You already know what kind of trouble we’ll be in if  _anyone_  hears you.”

“O-h-h-h-h, right.” Cheng nodded with a sly grin. The boy’s voice was a whisper as loud and annoying as he could get away with. “We have to be reeaaaaally quieeeeeet…”

A guard’s shifting feet outside the door stole Shen’s attention. He turned back to Cheng.

“Yes. Really quiet,” Shen said. “This isn’t a game, Cheng.”

“Says who? Your dad?” Cheng teased.

Shen sighed and angled his neck towards the floor. His bunched up eyebrow communicated a silent ‘yes’.

“Pfft! So what? What’s the worst he can do? String me up by my ankles and flog me?”

“You underestimate the great Lord Feng,” Shen joked dryly. “If only I had half your bravery.”

“Yeah, you can’t make up your mind if you wanna call it bravery or stupidity.”

“I never limited it to one or the other. It’s a perfect mixture of the two.”

“Uhhhh- _huh_.” Cheng smiled.

Shen paused, clearing his throat to speak. A bit of sadness scored his voice; “Well, you know the potential consequences of being here.”

“Sure, but I ain’t afraid of ‘em.” Cheng said with a a large, toothy smile, unphased by anything in the world around him.

There was a stark contrast between them in that moment—Cheng’s posture high and puffed out while Shen’s was tight with tension. Cheng’s breaths were heavy chuffs while Shen’s were silent and reserved.

As Shen looked over that toothy smile, he pondered how the wolf boy maintained his unbreakable resolve—that unyielding optimism and fearlessness which manifest itself in his poise and chipper attitude. Generations of tension between the Peacocks and the wolves were finally unfolding before Gongmen, yet Cheng found it in himself to wear that grin. Not even the immediate tension between his Shen's father and Cheng was enough to hold the wolf back. Where Lord Feng was like an immovable object, the wolf was an unstoppable force. That boy would probably wrestle squadrons of palace guards if it just meant getting his way—getting to be with Shen.

No school of thought Shen had ever studied offered anything more moving or meaningful than that simple observation—that an individual could exist in a state of complete independence from the controlling forces of man and nature. That part of Cheng was, to Shen, the most powerful thing in the universe.

But as he pondered Cheng’s resolve, Shen felt an uneasy thought bubbling up in the back of his mind. All that he knew was that it made him anxious, and that if he couldn’t figure out the source of the feeling, there would be consequences. Something important which he forgot, maybe… what was it?

 _The festival,_ Shen recalled, watching the dark sky through the window.  _Mother should come to wake me within the hour._

“The festival is today,” Shen said, “and Mother could come to summon me at any moment… I need to know what you’re doing here and how long you plan to stay.”

“Oh… right,” Cheng said, “I came here because I wanted to show you something. It was, ah… hmm…”

Cheng looked around the room to jar his memory, jaw hanging open lazily. As he tried to remember what it was he forgot, the wolf noticed a few changes to Shen’s bedroom since he’d last been there. For one thing, some of Shen’s maps were missing—especially that one they used to take down from the wall and use as a miniature battlefield—that one of Gongmen and its surroundings. He noticed, too, that less of the room was dedicated to recreation. The ironwood mantle above Shen’s bed no longer held a pair of wooden swords. Now there sat only a pair of vases painted with intricate peacock designs; spirals of golden plumage mixed and mingled with flames on the backdrop of a painted red sky. The all-seeing eyespots of a peacock’s tail lined the necks of the vases.

Cheng, personally, found the decoration’s aesthetic very tacky—and kind of unnerving.

More apparent to him was that Shen’s toys and figurines were lesser than before. Empty spaces covered the shelf that held them. As he lost focus, Cheng gravitated towards the shelf.

“What happened to all your…?” Cheng trailed off as he surveyed the missing figures, running his paw over an empty spot beside a group of vicious wolven pirates. “Where’s Colonel Guo? I gave him to you like a month ago. He was standing right next to Pirate Captain Ming.”

Shen walked beside Cheng, nodded absently. “’There comes a time when a lord must abandon those things which are immature and unnecessary’,” Shen relayed with a bitter tongue, “and the sooner those things are done away with, the better, hm? It was the Colonel’s time to go, so father says.”

“But no one ever banished Colonel Guo! He was the strongest boar alive!” Cheng protested, his grin melting to a little frown. “And that was a gift, too… that makes no sense. I gave him to you. That’s stupid.”

“Indeed.” Shen sighed, blinking with bulging gray eyes as he glanced sidelong at the wolf. It was entertaining to Shen, the way that the shelf held Cheng’s attention. He was like a moth drawn to the flames of a lamp.

While Cheng’s paw rested on the shelf, the cub continued to look it over, seeing what remained and what didn’t. With a quiet gasp, the wolf darted his attention to an opposable figurine at the highest bracket, hidden away from all the rest. It was a tall antelope clad in lamellar iron armor from his shoulders to his hooves. He clutched a spear at his right. His stance was wide and his face was a scowl. An eyepatch covered his left eye.

“General  _Guang!_ ” Cheng blurted out, hopping up to snatch the figure.

Shen again thrust the tip of his wing to Cheng’s snout to quiet him, but it did not wipe the enthusiasm off his fuzzy face. The wolf spoke up again, marginally quieter than before.

“The one-eyed terror, General Guang,” Cheng spoke as he marveled the figure, “and with real iron, too! I can’t believe you actually got your hands on this one. You know there’s only ten of these in existence, right?”

“Ten of who? The one-eyed terror of a general, that General Guang?” Shen raised his voice to match Cheng’s. “That grim campaigner, that breaker of resolve—the one who forced the king’s hand at the Battle of Yu Promontory.”

Cheng looked Shen in the eye, wonder covering his triangular face. His clawed fingertips wrapped around the figure’s armor, quivering with disbelief. “General Guang, the one-eyed terror who razed even the strongest fortifications… Shen, how did you get him?”

“Mother is easier to persuade,” Shen said. “I planned on giving him to you after the festival.”

“Really?” Cheng’s eyes widened further at the offer. “Are you sure?”

Shen turned to face him, smiled warmly. “I mean it. He’s just going to be taken like the rest, anyway. Why not give him a permanent home?”

Cheng chuckled in awe, barreling Shen with a stony shoulder as a show of thanks. Shen’s twig-legs were thrown off balance by the gesture. He took a second to regain his bearings and smooth out his colorless feathers.

“Oh, oh, hold on!” Cheng danced between his feet as he set the figure down. “I have an idea!”

“Do you, now?” Shen watched the wolf cub with interest.

Cheng dipped a paw between the fold in his robe, reaching in and tugging out a strand of black silk. With a swift motion he fixed the strip around his head to cover his left eye. The wolf’s gaze then bounced around the room as he searched for something… he settled on a wooden rod beside Shen’s shelf and took it in his hand, smashing the butt into the ground with the tip to the sky. There he was, standing as tall as he could with large posture and a mean look on his face.

There was a momentary silence between them as Shen stood confused. A little amused smile crept up at the edges of his beak, however, as he came to recognize the crude impression of General Guang. Shen found himself giggling at Cheng’s goofy scowl. He had to hide his face with a wing, shaking his head.

“You dare laugh at the ruthless General Guang!” Cheng growled as he angled the tip of the rod to Shen. He yell-whispered; “I’ll have your neck for that!”

“Oh, mercy,” Shen said flatly, holding his wings up in a mock-surrender. “Forgive me for my insolence, great General.”

“You walk a thin line, Peacock—If you do not respect the great General, he will teach you the true meaning of fear! Hyah!” Cheng growled. He pulled the spear back as if preparing to strike the frail peachick but froze at the crucial moment—stopped just before the killing strike. With that, his act faded. The wolf held the staff loose in his hands as he contemplated something.

“What’s the matter? Afraid to deliver the final blow?” Shen said with a hint of a smirk.

“No, it’s…” Cheng pulled off his makeshift eyepatch and threw it aside. He dropped the rod and trotted over to the window, pushing the shutters away as he motioned Shen over. The wolf thrust his torso halfway over the edge as he pointed to something down below. “I remember what I was going to show you! C’mon, follow me.”

Shen remained still and watched the giddy wolf. He put General Guang and the pretend-spear back where they belonged, moving to join Cheng. His pace was slow and uncertain as his skinny legs crept across the room.

“Careful, now,” Shen cautioned, instinctively reaching out towards Cheng’s back.

The wolf teetered back and forth with his stomach balanced on the windowsill. He smiled wide as his fur was caught up in the early morning breeze.

“Cheng… I’m serious,” he said. “That’s a long way down. And you-”

Before Shen could finish his sentence, Cheng pushed off the windowsill and catapulted his heavy torso over the edge, disappearing from Shen’s sight. A horrified gasp escaped the peachick as he rushed to the window.

But as he looked down with dread in his heart, Shen found that rugged, toothy grin staring back up at him from a shallow ledge down below.

There was a general look about the wolf that spoke fearlessness, power filling his joints and fingertips. A speckling of dirt covered his pointy jaw. Patches of grime dotted his fur like bruises worn with pride. His stance was strong and low and more than prepared for the next drop. And those wide, glowing eyes opened up at Shen with all the conviction that a fall from this height was survivable—even though it certainly was not.

And  _that_ was the most powerful thing in the universe.

Again, Shen had to consider what mixture of bravery and stupidity drove Cheng forward. He peered down at him and let out a relieved—but slightly upset sigh.

“Come on down, you’re gonna be fine!” Cheng stood with his hands on his hips, watching Shen wrestle with indecision at the windowsill. Looking up from the ledge, Shen appeared a lump of snow dressed in white—blank white feathers were plastered against the cinnabar of the lower palace. From there, he seemed so small in comparison to his ancestral home.

Shen looked back and forth between his room and Cheng. He eventually settled on Cheng.

“This can’t take any longer than 15 minutes,” he said.

“It won’t,” Cheng said. “Promise.”

A hasty promise, Shen knew. As he stood there and mulled it over, Shen had to imagine the look on his mother’s face if she were to discover an empty room. Or the heart attack his absence might induce.

But heart attack or not, there was always his father’s response, if indeed he couldn’t make it back in time. At best, he would probably say goodbye to any illusion of personal self-determination, at least for a while. The worst-case scenario was prolonged separation from Cheng. That, too, could be regained upon maturity. After all, Lord Feng’s parental hegemony had a finite lifespan.

 _What for?_  Shen pondered. _A few years of scrutiny for 15 minutes of fun? I’d like to see the old man keep up the act for that long. That would be a feat. Let’s see him do that, if he learns of this. Let’s see him do that._

Then, Shen remembered the advice of the Soothsayer:  _hold patient that your father’s ways are tempered._

“You coming down or not?” Cheng shouted.

Shen scanned the perimeter of the surrounding fortress wall; all clear.

Then, he checked the inner-ward created by the wall and the palace. From what he could see, it seemed clear—although the ward had blind spots aplenty. Moon shadows cast by the foliage of autumn-yellowed penjing maples obscured quite a lot. Little crevices and tight spaces in the northwestern courtyard were just as elusive. It didn’t help at all that the courtyard was enclosed by the palace barracks.

No intruder—or escapee, for that matter—could ever be so certain they weren’t being watched from the darkness. That was something he knew was by design.

 _That_  was what the symbol of a peacock’s eyespots was meant to represent; they were the all-seeing eyes of nobility. No wonder they could be found on almost every decoration produced from the Peacocks.

The last places he thought to check were the two towers overlooking the northwestern part of the ward; one was empty, one had visible motion inside. That could only mean dayshift was in the process of relieving nightshift. If there was any critical point in making this decision, it was now.

“Cold feet?” Cheng teased.

“No,” Shen said, “Let me take care of something.”

He ducked back into the room, just to be thorough. He scanned it, excepting nothing, looking for any signs of Cheng having been there.

The rod was back where it belonged. General Guang stood proudly at the top of the shelf. Nothing was misplaced or missing.

Not a hair. Not a scratch. No dust or dirt or drool.

Shen took a moment to make his bed, smoothing over the sheets with a wing. He went on his way back to the window.

The chilling breeze met Shen there. There was  _no way_  he was going out without another layer. He wasn’t the heftiest peachick in the world.

Shen went to open his armoire, picking out a blue robe and tying it on around his loose pajamas. Back to the window.

But he paused once more and listened outside the room—no noise coming from the hall. Onto the window it was.

Shen stepped up and gripped the the sill with his talons, preparing to join Cheng. He thought about the Soothsayer. Then, he thought once more about his mother—a  _heart attack_. Those thoughts made Shen sick of himself. And then he was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

“Who has been mischaracterized through modern legend more than Lord Feng? Half of the time he is said to have been a caring father who couldn’t bring himself to discipline his son. Otherwise, we are told he was a tyrant to both his son and his people. Often the storyteller simplifies matters to impart their lesson, and this is one such case; Feng’s memory has been so contorted that it is nearly impossible to separate reality from myth.

As an eyewitness, I begin this discussion with an observation: you can hardly see a peacock’s true colors until you watch him lose everything.”

— FROM “GONGMEN: SPRING TO AUTUMN, BOOK 2” BY THE SOOTHSAYER OF GONGMEN

* * *

Although Lord Feng walked through his palace halls towards a room full of important men, he couldn’t help but think of his wife;

 _I’ll see to the ladies’ rehearsal while you attend to the city,_ Lady Zhen’s soft voice replayed itself in his mind as he moved.  _Don’t be too long now, dear. Today is a day of_ celebration,  _isn’t it?_

It was 25 minutes ago that he brushed his beak against hers.

 _I’ll not be long,_  he said,  _but you know the Emperor’s Emissary. We’d do wrong not to be thorough—he certainly didn’t travel a hundred miles just to be brushed aside._

 _Then what was it I did all those years ago when you married me?_ Lady Zhen pressed into him yet closer, making a lovey pout.  _Except I must have traveled multiple hundreds._

 _I’d have ventured all China for you, if only mother had allowed,_ Feng said. _I promise, our smattering of a rebellion will be over by New Year._

He pulled his neck back to look her in the eyes and repeated;  _I promise._

He told her that he loved her, and she responded likewise.

Now, as Feng neared the middle of the grand hall, his green pupils trailed over the large doors awaiting him at the end. All the peacock’s eyes could do was wander—look, stop, and wander—thoughts shifting again to family. He recalled something he told his son, Lord Shen, before sending him to bed the night before;

 _As you walk through the city,_ Feng said,  _you must move with that confidence which makes one formidable. Wings at your sides, neck and chest high- and when you’ve grown all your coverts, son, the tail should be on display._

Shen assumed the position exactly as his father instructed. He looked straight ahead with all the poise of a Peacock lord. At that, Feng was struck with admiration at how quickly his son could learn these things. It was even faster, perhaps, than he felt he could rightly keep up with. And anyway, he’d never picked up on those subtleties when he was Shen’s age.

Feng silently hoped that he’d made up for all that lost time. Made up for the neglect—the sickly years.

 _That is alright,_ the elder peacock said with a nod.  _When the time comes, you’ll know the posture by instinct. Remember, move with grace and power. Grace and power. Remember those words as you move._

 _Yes, father,_ the frail peachick answered before Feng sent him off to bed. Although, he made sure to remind Shen how valuable his sleep was—especially considering tomorrow’s festivities.

That tomorrow had become today. By now, those festivities were only hours away.

But Feng didn’t feel particularly festive. Instead he wore a little squint under his furrowed brow, kept his steps long, precise, and at a constant rhythm as his slender legs carried him through the lower halls. His grey beak was pursed and stretched to the corners of his face by this elusive feeling of unhappiness. The feeling had been following him all morning, or at least since he’d left the presence of Lady Zhen—since he’d assured her that this whole mess of a rebellion would be quashed within the year.

 _If only, dear,_ he told himself.

In that moment there existed a contradiction in the peacock, and one very familiar to nobility. Feng was this walking symbol of grace and power, yet he felt no joy in it. The deep-blue feathers running down his neck were plucked to complete smoothness, flowing seamlessly into the red collar of his pattern-woven robes. His eyebrows and feather-moustache, both of which had been routinely trimmed at breakfast, swayed with his movement. Indeed, the only parts of Feng which moved without authority were his moustache, brows, and robes as they were perturbed by the little bounce of each mechanical step.

With his wings at his sides, chest high, tail on display as it stretched from one side of the hall to the other, Feng carried himself the only way he knew how: with grace and power. Of course he knew that neither of those things would ever remedy his growing disquiet. But he also knew that ignoring the feeling was just a necessary discipline. That was something he felt he owed his family, his people… and perhaps that Emissary, too.

There was also a certain discipline in fending off the morning’s hazy tiredness. The two antelope guards which flanked Feng had to appreciate it. After all, they had accompanied him on the entire 629-step journey down the tower.

Feng paused at the end of the hall. His trailing antelope’s lock-step march halted as the peacock scanned the large doors out front.

Feng became aware of two guards stationed at either side of the doors. They were his own palace wolves, now standing at attention to recognize his presence. Both held a spear firm. Both kept their pointy chins high and muscles tight.

It wasn’t clear why the thought crossed his mind, but Feng paused to respect the fact that these wolves could easily take on his two antelope. Tear them to shreds, even. Were that to happen, Feng would be his own best defense.

The thought brought to attention the emptiness in his sleeves; Feng felt oddly naked in the absence of his usual feather blades. He rubbed one feather against another, feeling the unusual empty space where there was supposed to be a metal handle.

It may have been a day of celebration, but still… that wasn’t worth a lack of security.

Feng stood and looked between the guard wolves with half-lidded eyes.

“Both of you, dismissed,” he ordered.

“Yes, My Lord,” the wolves responded in unison with a quick nod. They wasted no time as they filed away with spears angled over their shoulders.

Feng stilled himself and closed his eyes. He listened to the heavy receding footsteps of the wolves as they disappeared into the hall behind him.

Quieter, quieter… gone.

Feng’s flanking antelope exchanged a sideways glance at one another. In their shared gaze they confirmed each other’s bemusement at the dismissal of the wolves. The more courageous of the pair cleared his throat and spoke: “My Lord, shall we take up station by the entrance? To replace them, that is.”

“Yes, replace them,” Feng answered, swiveling to face the two as he continued in a low voice, “And ensure that none of their kind are stationed around this room.”

The less courageous antelope blinked in confusion. “Their… kind?”

Feng rolled his eyes with a sigh, leaning yet closer to the pair. “You know.  _Their_ kind.”

“He means the wolves, you bumbling-!” the more courageous antelope chided his partner with a whisper.

Feng cleared his throat. “Yes. See to it. Replace  _their_ kind with  _your_ kind wherever possible. What is discussed inside these doors remains inside these doors. Do you understand?”

“Yes, My Lord,” the antelope answered.

Feng turned back around to face the doors which held all those important men.

 _On with it,_ he thought.  _Let’s get this over and done with._

Feng collapsed his tail to let the antelope by. At his command they pulled the doors open, hardwood creaking low and heavy. He watched as a sliver of light widened into a small rectangular room.

On the inside it was wider than it was deep and framed by open-air windows. There stood Feng’s personal entourage, faces illuminated by the faint white light of paper lanterns strung around the perimeter. Many were rabbits and pigs, most of them merchants. There were Feng’s geese advisors, too, standing beside a well-defined line of antelope guardsmen on the back wall. The crowd radially surrounded a miniature throne, allowing a generous passageway for Feng if he desired to sit.

They were certainly expecting him.

So many faces—all of whom Feng recognized. Some he knew personally. But most of them were just useful strangers.

The peacock stood and listened to the doors closing behind him. Just as they clicked shut, the antelope stood at attention.

The pigs, rabbits, and geese gave Feng a brief bow—except for one out front who separated himself from the crowd.

Feng found a scowling face peering up at him through hazy silver eyes. He was a scraggly little goose with a crooked neck and molting black feathers, short, sickly, and old. That was Mang Jingdi, the Emperor’s intra-Imperial Emissary to Gongmen. He stood out from the group not because he was the largest-looking figure; Feng and his tail could still lay claim to that.

Instead, it was the cloak draped over the goose’s shrunken frame that placed him above all others. That was the Imperial Goldsilk hanging on his shoulders. A grade of fabric more eminent than his simply did not exist. Details stitched into the garment were a great visual hodgepodge of flames and vines and thorns and scales, all upon more flames. And atop the goose’s head, a tall and squarish cap much too large for his skull, decorated with extravagant gold stripes.

In China, visual complexity was synonymous with status, and Mang Jingdi wouldn’t have had it any other way. Presently he coughed, licked at his beak, and blinked up at the Lord of Gongmen City.

“Feng,” the old goose greeted without investment.

“Imperial Emissary Mang Jingdi,” Feng replied as he forced a warm smile. “A pleasure to have you—and after such a long journey down. I take it the weather was agreeable?”

“F-f-f-f-ine,” Mang sneered, “but I didn’t come to prattle with you, Peacock.”

Feng chuckled. Any effort to conceal the insincerity behind his friendly demeanor disappeared. “Yes, of course. Perhaps another time. We ought not deprive His Highness of his valued  _Jingdi_ for long.”

 _And how much the Emperor must miss his sickly little errand boy,_ Feng thought as he strode past the Emissary to take a seat at the miniature throne.

“M-m-m-m-hm,” Mang groaned as his reptilian pupils trailed Feng’s movement. He almost blinked, standing at the end of the aisle opposite the peacock. “Let’s talk now about these… mm, wolves of yours.”

From his throne Feng looked over the faces of the entourage, scanning up and down the aisle, noting the unease that his tension with the Emissary had instilled. The venom certainly was not lost on the people, especially not on those who had already experienced the displeasure of a past meeting with Mang Jingdi. At least  _they_  knew what to expect.

Maybe Shen’s advisors-to-be thought the goose’s presence was the Emperor telling Gongmen that he didn’t need their respect to rule them… that he was confident enough to send them this walking corpse wrapped in the Imperial goldsilk.

But Feng already knew how to interpret the utter disregard. All the kind-hearted Emissaries were caught up wooing the more self-determined, militaristic provinces. The Emperor thought sending an agreeable face was all he had to do to prevent his officials from shifting their weight a little. What squirming that was!

Here was the crucial thing; Gongmen was China’s foundry, and that Emperor was spread so thin that he couldn’t even afford to reign it in properly.

 _Well_ —if only he knew how adept Feng was at concealing his numbers.

“Peacock!” the Emissary erupted, rasping, breaking the uneasy silence. “Daydream no longer! Let us discuss your wolves.”

“Guard Commander Antelope, Colonel Ao, step forth,” Feng ordered, nonchalant.

Obeying his orders, the antelope shifted to allow the passage of a figure concealed by their numbers. The crowd watched as a towering pair of horns moved through the guardsmen, the motion marked by their owner’s whomping hoofsteps. Rabbits standing at Feng’s end of the aisle had to scurry aside, squeaking in concealed fear while they scrambled to make way. Feng, the Emissary, and all others kept their attention on the Commander as he and his shorter Colonel emerged.

The large antelope Commander swept over the crowd with brown eyes. A red-feathered metal helmet sat around the base of his horns. Jaw sharp, horns long and twisting, lamellar armor bright red and heavy; everything about the Commander projected this unmoving prowess. His shoulders did, no doubt. They were wide like the axel of a wagon—after all, they had to support all that unnecessary weight.

 _Rough but effective,_ Feng thought.  _What competent lord doesn’t have his muscle?_

Beside the Commander stood a shorter antelope with thin eyes, straight horns, and a black-and-white-striped face. Although the Commander captivated most of the entourage’s attention, Feng’s admiration was for the young Colonel Ao.

The Commander separated himself from the Colonel, turned to the Emissary and quickly bowed to him. A wrinkly smile stretched across his battle-scarred jaw.

“Imperial Emissary Mang Jingdi, a great honor to have you,” the Commander greeted in a voice powerful and polite. “As you know, we’ll keep this brief.”

“Such is your nature,” the goose said.

The Commander turned to Feng and gave him the same friendly bow. “And My Lord Feng—it’s good to see you again after staying at the boundary villages. I’m sure all of us are very thankful to you, having been spared a trip up the stairs.”

Feng chuckled genuinely, giving some in the crowd enough confidence to do the same. “Well, Antelope, I have to keep the guard disciplined somehow. Let’s not get used to such graces.”

“As you wish, My Lord,” the Commander said. “Now to discuss what we came for—the wolf rebellion.” He placed his hulking arms behind his back, leaving his Colonel in favor for a slow march up the aisle.

All eyes were on the Commander as he placed each weighty step, and who could blame them? Antelope was a living legend. Seven notches lined the spear at his back, one for each conflict he’d participated in during his stint in the Imperial Army—all victories.

“The wolves of Gongmen we divide into two classes; the lower and the higher,” Commander Antelope spoke as he paced. “The lower class is uneducated, rough, and brutish—these are the miners and metal workers of Gongmen. They are the muscle that makes our city a regional giant. They extract the metal, purify it, smelt it, blacksmith it—all crucial to our economy.”

The commander turned as he reached Feng’s end of the aisle. He continued in the direction of the Emissary.

“The  _higher_  wolves—the more educated, literate, and disciplined—these, along with the antelope, comprise the guardsmen of Gongmen. They have a mind to match their strength, and even I must measure the antelope against them. This is the group we select from when choosing overseers for our mines and foundries. That way, the lower wolves do not feel they are being externally controlled. They are not made to work by the city, but one of their own—one who has the same discipline as any of my antelope, the same devotion to their Lord. This has been the strategy with the wolves for generations, and until now it has tempered their emotions.”

Commander Antelope paused before reaching Mang Jingdi’s end of the aisle. They exchanged a familiar glance before the large antelope turned and kept marching.

“But! But, that is, until now,” the Commander said, nodded to himself. “Late in the spring, our spies among the foundry workers reported growing unease. A workplace injury sparked unrest, and the blame was placed on ‘untenable production quotas…’ After the city rightly denied fault in the matter, intelligence suggested the lower wolves were planning a formal response. We thought a halt to production was likely. This was confirmed by subsequent reports which pointed to a rogue overseer—one who sought to exploit the heightened emotions of our workers for his own gain. One who sought to unite the metal wolves in a coordinated action against their Lord.”

“Overseer Buwei,” Feng groaned. “You give a wolf land, enlightenment, riches, and he stabs you right in the back. The nerve of that mongrel… a talented one.”

“A talented one indeed,” the Commander said, “so talented that he’d picked out our hired plants. So, without the city’s eyes peeping in the foundries, Buwei educated the metal wolves the same way we educated him—a vicious attack on the natural order of wolf society!”

A measure of disgust higher than usual marked Emissary Mang Jingdi’s disheveled face. The implications this imposed on the already fragile Dynasty bored into his aching bones.

The Commander turned to face the goose. “You understand the necessity of the wolf classing system, Imperial Emissary Mang Jingdi,” he said.

“I understand the fragility of it,” the Emissary said.

“Two hundred years is hardly fragile,” Feng cut in.

The Emissary ignored Feng, keeping his attention on the Commander. “How far did Overseer Buwei get in his game, hm?" he asked. "How did he manage to raze one of your city’s foundries and disable the other two, mmm?”

“That’s what I’m getting to,” the Commander said. “Mid-summer, Buwei’s plan had come to action. The wolves managed a complete halt to production, despite the obvious risk of losing their allotted land and crop. In exchange for work they demanded more land, more crop, some coin, and safer conditions.”

“I must emphasize, Imperial Emissary Mang Jingdi,” Feng began, “that our foundries are the safest and most efficient in all China. Buwei’s claim otherwise was just a sham—a cry for undue sympathy. Even if the perceived danger was true, his only hope was to increase the wolves’ land and crop. Even  _they_  can become masters of propaganda, so it seems.”

The Emissary again ignored Feng in favor of the Commander.

“Yes, greed! Plain and simple,” the Commander agreed. “We arrested Buwei on the second day for interfering with his Lord’s commerce. Now, we were not careless in this decision—increasing the guard's presence at our foundries seemed a natural measure. Judging by the wolves’ coordination up to that point, we didn’t want to take any chances with our already rabid workers…”

“Now how did this Buwei raze one of your foundries?” the Emissary barked impatiently.

“Ah, see, it was not Buwei,” Commander Antelope explained, “but it was the one who replaced Buwei after his arrest—his accomplice, Overseer Zhuo.”

Stern thoughtfulness covered the Commander’s face as he continued to march up and down the room, eyes trained on whatever lay ahead of him. He paused in thought and faced the antelope guardsmen, singling out the short, straight-horned Colonel among them.

“Colonel Ao,” the Commander said, “you’ve a good understanding of Overseer Zhuo. Explain this one for Imperial Emissary Mang Jingdi.”

The black-and-white-faced Colonel stepped forth. “Yes, Commander,” he said in a voice high and weasely. He met the Emissary’s little scowl with his own pokerface. Tight posture held his hooves at his waist as he spoke; “Overseer Zhuo was hired as a palace guard seven years ago, after having left low-level managerial work at the southwestern foundry. During his stay he formed a web of personal connections with the others. If one palace wolf did not know another personally, they at least knew him through Zhuo. This was thanks to his charisma, intelligence, and his talent as a leader. Zhuo had become the de-facto pack leader of the palace wolves, something like head of his own syndicate—a brotherhood operating on personal favors and mutual respect. Though in hindsight we see the decision as a mistake, he was eventually chosen as an overseer.”

The Colonel blinked and chewed at the side of his tongue. Though he was nowhere near as physically gifted as his Commander, the Colonel’s slit-eyes had a certain awareness about them that could intimidate all the same. Those eyes sat between stripes of black and white, the etching of the colors definite and sharp.

“Buwei didn’t have reputation like his accomplice Zhuo,” the Colonel said, “so it was only through him that Buwei could have coordinated the metal wolves. After we arrested Buwei, Zhuo took his place as the leader of the pack, except that his rhetoric was markedly different from his predecessor. While Buwei advised peaceful means of disobedience, Zhuo’s rhetoric was more destructive. He issued us a three-day ultimatum. If we were not to meet the initial demands, coupled with the release of his friend and the removal of the guards from the foundries, Zhuo threatened to loose the wolves on Gongmen. Which is precisely what he did when he razed the southwestern foundry and disabled the other two.”

“What else did Zhuo manage to destroy, mm?” the Emissary questioned.

The Commander dismissed his Colonel with the wave of a hoof. “Some of ours were injured in the scuffle. Though the rebels were forced to retreat to the boundary villages, Emissary, I assure you, these barbarians of wolves—they left with wounds to lick aplenty.”

“And this is why you’re, mmm… stationed at the villages,” the Emissary said, “because they house your runaway rebels. House their pack leader, Zhuo.” He wrapped his wings around each other from within his sleeves. The Emissary returned his attention to the Colonel. “What are his aims?”

“While him and his men hide among the villages, they’re in the process of incorporating our miners,” the Colonel responded. “That should be easy for them since the wolves’ villages and our mines are always in proximity. This is all to solve a nagging problem; the defectors require an alternative source of crop now that they’re out of the city’s employ. So Zhuo’s plan in seizing the mines serves a double purpose; first, he will feed his own with the export of raw material, at least in the interim…”

Feng’s eyelids narrowed in distaste. If there was anything that could spark the peacock’s ire, it was the theft of his son’s economic inheritance.

Noting Feng’s building indignation, the Colonel continued promptly; “Second- in the case that we do not negotiate an end to the protest, Zhuo will order the construction of wolf-owned foundries for his own economic security. That means a wolf-owned monopoly on both minerals and metal goods. Neither of these scenarios can be allowed to happen, of course; my Commander and I suggest an operation to regain control of the mines and their neighboring villages as soon as possible. Such an operation must be done quickly, discretely, and without notice, as the wolves are likely to damage or destroy the mines before we can recapture them. Seizing the villages poses its own challenges, too, as Zhuo is in the process of arming them.”

 _A fine mind,_ Feng thought.  _The young and talented Colonel Ao will advise my son._

“Your metal workers are gone. Your miners are gone. So the only wolves that remain are your guard, hm?” the Emissary said as he turned to look at Feng, that one he despised. “Tell me, Peacock, how many of them remain loyal after the fallout? How many have already defected to join these barbarians?”

“Let’s just say,” Feng spoke in a level voice, “that the barracks are in wanting.”

“For ten of our wolf guard, three have defected by now,” the Commander elaborated.

“And what of those who remain?” the Emissary asked. “Do you still trust them?”

“No,” Feng said. “Not one of them. Not a single one of their kind.”

Presently the many faces strewn about the room scanned around to make sure no wolves were among them. They were relieved to find only antelope guardsmen.

“Then what do you do with these mongrels you call your guardsmen, Peacock?” the old goose asked with a wicked grin, bare skin creasing at the corners of his eyes.

“What then.” Feng muttered. The anger masked by his calmness was bubbling to the surface. “Tell him, Commander Antelope, of our faithless wolven guardsmen.”

“Of course, My Lord,” the large Antelope said. “We’ve been aware of spies within our palace wolves for months. As of now, they seek information on our strategic positions, what we know of the arming of the villages… they seek information on Lord Feng’s potential bargain, what he might be willing to give. We’ve rooted out many and are still hunting for many, but I believe our Lord has already come to a decision on the matter.”

“Have you?” Mang Jingdi asked, stepping closer to Feng. Each step of his was punctuated by the cracking of his little bones as they shifted into place. That had to be the first time the goose had moved in a while.

“Yes,” Feng said, lowering himself from the throne as he straightened himself. “The palace wolves will be exiled within the week.”

Nervous glances and unsure mutterings moved through the entourage. Even Feng’s advisory geese were taken aback at the announcement. One of them had enough nerve to put himself forward; a brown-feathered goose in a black cloak stepped to meet Lord Feng.

“M- My Lord,” the advisor stammered as he found himself dwarfed by the larger peacock. “With all due respect, we cannot advise such an action.”

Feng met the nervous goose and raised an eyebrow. “And why is that?”

“W- well,” the goose began, “What spies we have been able to, uh… capture, and, you know… interrogate. They’ve been a useful source of information on Zhuo’s—”

Feng cleared his throat, shutting the goose up.

“You look to the old saying; ‘keep your enemies closer than your friends’,” Feng said to the goose but directed toward the entourage. “Understand this, my advisors: we don’t have to interrogate the enemy to know how quickly he arms himself. That much can be deduced by raw observation. We’ve a fine channel of intelligence at our disposal—thank the Commander and the Colonel for that. The pandas, too, have been quite useful in gathering intelligence on their neighboring wolves. And though they follow a supposed oath of neutrality, necessity will keep them loyal to Gongmen.”

Feng returned to his advisor. “Between the antelope and the pandas,” he said, “lack of intelligence is hardly a worry at all.”

Feng began to turn away from the goose advisor, but the smaller one insisted with an uneasy croak. He reached out with a wing to regain the peacock’s attention.

“B- but Lord Feng,” he said, “that’s not the only ramification. Our guard wolves, they might be used as a… they can be used as a- sort of a… um…”

Eyes wide with impatience, Feng leaned close to the goose advisor. The smaller one’s beak hung open in hesitation.

“Used how?” Feng demanded.

“As a- a diplomatic bridge between the city and the rebels-“

“Enough!” Feng commanded, hurrying the brown goose back to his place among the others. All of those around Feng recoiled from the invisible force spawned by his voice.

Mang Jingdi’s nostrils flared in mild amusement at the outburst. He watched as Feng stroked the tip of his beak with a single blue feather, beak hanging open as he considered something, tried to calm himself.

“It is disheartening,” Feng muttered, “how often now I hear the Soothsayer’s voice in that of my own advisors.”

“Exiled!” the Emissary shouted with a trailing, sputtering chuckle. “The day is saved! All it took was the palace wolves being exiled!  _Exiled!_  And I’ve traveled a hundred miles just to witness this… this half-measure of yours!”

It took every fiber of Feng’s existence not to place the Emissary’s pencil neck between his talons right then and there. Instead, he opted not to strangle a personal associate of the Emperor of China. Wearing a calm mask was preferable to that. Feng just watched as the Emissary crept down the aisle to meet him face-to-face.

“Due respect, Imperial Emissary Mang Jingdi,” Feng said, “that’s completely false.”

“Really?” Mang Jingdi laughed. “Your antelope stall in the barracks while the wolves eat your industry alive. You’ve allowed the enemy to live beside you in the Sacred Flame for months. You’ve not even talked about the foundries—no telling how long  _that_  will take to rebuild! So what do I report back to His Highness, Feng? Do I tell him that you’ve done anything more than let things deteriorate? Do I tell him that you’ve done anything more than let your city be consumed by wolves? Do I tell him, perhaps, that you’ve been anything more than a half-measure—an immutable, spineless coward?”

“You’ll have much more to report than just the exile,” Feng said. “You’ll tell him my full wolf-decision.”

The crowd kept their eyes trained on Feng as he moved yet closer to the goose. The fowl looked each other dead in the eyes. The contempt between them could be tasted in the room’s stagnant air.

“Hmm, and you’ve explicitly waited for my presence to make this decision, mm?” the Emissary’s grin tightened. “If you hope to impress me, Peacock, you’ve very high expectations.”

“Really, now?” Feng let out a snide little laugh. “What is it? Do you truly think I’ll  _bargain_  with these hooligans?”

“I cannot guess  _how much_  you plan to give them,” Mang Jingdi bit back.

A deep breath filled Feng’s lungs before he expelled it. His green pupils then trailed over the white lanterns hanging around. He focused on one, traced his eyes around its glowing circumference, switched his gaze to the line between the ceiling and the wall, trailed that. Those green pupils within blue feathers darted around as the Peacock’s beak hung open.

“The Emissary wishes to know what I’m willing to bargain away,” Feng said with an idle gaze. “But truthfully, whatever I give is given away by Gongmen—given away by the city. So I will speak not of  _my_  bargain, but the city’s bargain. And that decision is not made lightly. It is not made outside the bounds of our values. It is made in the context of our city.”

Feng blinked, considering his words carefully.

“This city, for generations, has been one of China’s finest,” Feng said. “This city has been a shining beacon of brilliance since even the days of kings and dukes. We’ve produced the finest metal, built the tallest towers, carved the deepest harbors—even brought fire out from the minerals of the Earth! I tell you, my people, there’s hardly a thing Gongmen does not excel in. One musn’t stand and wonder why we’re the hub of coastal trade—the go-between of the far north and far south.”

Mang Jingdi tilted his chin up, listening to Feng in his prickly stillness. It was interesting to him, how this one he hated spoke with more conviction than his own Emperor.

Feng rotated his body slowly and gaged the reaction of the crowd. Engaged, but not yet sold—not yet sure where Feng was going or what his wolf-decision was.

“We are a hub,” Feng continued, nodding. “We are a shining example of what every city could be. We set the standard of greatness for His Highness's people. We are the standard. But some still wonder, 'what is it that makes us great?' They wonder, ‘what makes us excel?’”

Feng turned again, slow and confident. His sapphire dress swayed with the motion.

“What makes us great,” Feng said, “is our harmony, our peace. Never in our history have we pillaged, threatened, or made unprovoked battle with our neighbors. Search the oldest records—all the way back to my great-great-great grandparents—and find me one rogue Peacock Lord who sought the throne before it was rightly his. Look through our city’s history and find a single noble who turned the spear on his own people. You’ll find none,” Feng said, strutting past the Emissary. He paused at the front of the room while facing the entourage. “It is in that harmony—that tradition we’ve preserved so long—that our city’s glory blossoms.”

In the faces before him Feng detected growing interest. He continued, now striking a sullen tone:

“But the wolves,” he said with a squint. “The wolves have abandoned faith in that harmony. Now they shun the peace—that very thing that has made our city last. It has not been enough for their appetite. They hunger now for more than what is owed. They thirst for riches without work. And what they will do to sate that appetite is nothing short of violence. They take our labor, our mines, weapons, guardsmen—if they could, they would take this city. Look no further than the smoldering remains of our foundry to become convinced of that.”

Thoughts of the lost foundry tugged at the room’s emotions. The merchants were lacking in bronzeware; the advisors’ lives had been thrown for a loop in managing this crisis, and the antelope were still sore from the incident.

“So you ask me,” Feng trailed along, “’how much will the city give to the wolves?’”

Mang Jingdi craned his neck closer; it had to be some manner of insanity which kept that grin on his face. The goose’s hollow eyes followed Feng as he approached, watching the peacock lower himself down down to the goose's own level.

“Well, let me tell you my bargain;” Feng said. “I will give them nothing.”

The Emissary found himself silently admiring Feng, the one he hated.

 _If only you had the courage to loose your antelope on my Emperor,_ he thought.  _How much I would love for you to oust that spineless Emperor of mine. Heavens—replace him!_

“There is no bargaining with barbarians,” Feng said as he reeled from the Emissary. “If we give them an inch, we set a poisonous precedent. We know that there is no pleasing a wolf. If we bargain now, that carnivorous hunger will return to bite us later; we would leave the gates open for future aggression. See, one does not just forgive the thief and beg him never to steal again—no, no. Due justice must be carried out. The law must be executed.”

The stiff-necked peacock looked over the crowd, feeling them under his spell. Then, he turned to the Colonel and motioned him over with a wing.

“Colonel Ao, the map,” Feng commanded.

Ao nodded and produced a large scroll from his satchel. He unrolled it in the middle of the aisle and set it on the floor, allowing the entourage to see. It was a colorful map of Gongmen and its immediate surroundings. Faded charcoal scribblings covered the surface—a childish stain on the silk compared to the newer, more definite markings; red circles surrounded the perimeter of Gongmen to denote select villages. Beside each circle was the traditional character denoting ‘wolf’.

Feng stood on one leg as he dragged one of the other’s talons across the map, settling on a forest far north of Gongmen. It was marked by the familiar symbol—the all-seeing eyespot of a Peacock’s tail.

“We’re stationed here,” Feng said. “As of now, it’s our only forward base near the villages, a day’s journey from the city going on foot. But it’s more than adequate for the time—good cover, good mobility, so the Commander says.”

Feng’s talon moved to sweep the perimeter, dragging across the red circles with a gentle scraping sound.

“Here—the village of the Delta Fork. West from there, in order—Wei, Middle Bend, Gui Hill… each is a mining village under Zhuo’s control.”

The Commander stepped beside Feng and turned to the Emissary. “It’s really just a matter of kicking down the doors and seizing them,” he said. “Come spring, we’ll have enough numbers built up to spearhead the operation, starting with Delta Fork village. Soon enough we’ll liberate the villagers from this gangster menace Zhuo.”

The Emissary’s foggy eyes were fixed on the map at his feet. He nodded with the first signs of approval.

“Ah, Feng,” the goose said, “Yes-s-s-s-s, yes-s-s-s-s… I see now why you exile the palace wolves. Your campaign cannot be planned in the presence of spies. Mmmmm-hmmm, secretive stuff. The mongrels cannot see this coming.”

“You really should place more faith in your associates,” Feng said as he looked down at the Emissary, wearing another friendly mask.

Mang Jingdi met Feng with an entertained look.

“We shall see, come spring,” he said.

“Mhm,” Feng said. “We shall see.”

Colonel Ao retrieved the map and rolled it into his satchel as Feng felt a feather tapping his shoulder. He turned to find another one of his geese, just not the one from before. This one was fatter, darker, and out of breath. His feathers were ruffled and messy from some sort of physical exertion.

“My Lord,” he whispered, intending the message for Feng’s ears alone. “There’s a problem.”

Feng swallowed and appeared calm. His throat became heavy in the moment’s grim anticipation.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“Shen has gone missing,” the goose said.


	4. Chapter 4

“Such principles are universal and easily understood, for, as we have experienced in nature, and learned from the dialogues of antiquity, strict mandate has never been a reasonable treatment for impulse. In the way of this, I offer the following passage.”

— MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF THE WITCH OF GONGMEN

* * *

Somehow, they did it. Shen and Cheng evaded the Palace’s morning patrol on their way through the ward. It took squeezing through nooks and crannies, ducking, hiding, sliding, and a direct application of the strategizing part of the peachick’s brain, but they did it. Upon reaching the base of the fortress wall, however, Shen’s body reminded him of his pitifully low stamina; his legs wobbled in soreness, and in his chest, there came a pathetic shortness of breath. Covering his ankles and drenching the hem of his robes was the morning dew, chilling to numbness. Even the gentle breeze bit at his dew-wet legs, though the wind was mostly broken by the centuries-old barrier vaulted in the sky.

Climbing high above Shen like a tidal wave of stone, the fortress wall stood unmoving. The barrier was an architectural feat—a behemoth of Peacock excess! The bulk of its sections had been cut, hauled, and laid in place by ancient canid stonemasons. Those wolves of old gave it great thickness and great height, and when their toil had piled high enough, they hoisted up pallets of brick and made four watchtowers, strung together at the base by a perimeter of chiseled battlements.

Excessive, true- but the wall served to protect the untampered beauty of the Peacocks’ home. The Tower and its surrounding gardens enjoyed strict isolation from the realm it governed. Every yellowed maple, stonepath, and patch of green grass existed in its own idyllic realm; chaos and filth had no place here.

Another gust of wind swept the thought from Shen’s mind. At the advice of a shiver, he pulled the blue fabric tight around his shoulders. He felt  _dreadfully_  cold—much colder than any noble should have been. Indeed, there was an old Peacock saying about leaving nests and freezing to death. Shen couldn’t conjure up the exact wording, but he understood the principle.

As if he hadn’t learned this lesson already.  _Experience_  taught Shen to stray from the cold.

It was during winter, years ago. He was five years old and out in this same patch.

It was a joyous time when little Shen became well for a month. For a few uninterrupted weeks he could walk, eat, and speak without much inhibition. It was a time lucid enough to have imparted some memories here and there. Yes, it left him with little islands of memory, old places and things half-submerged in the illness stupor. From these sparse moments, Shen remembered most a small birthday party, something involving the physician, and the warmth of many blankets.

He saw his parents the night before the incident, watched them from the warmth of the Soothsayer’s little apartment room. They were like him, but big and colorful… peculiar creatures.

That morning, he had somehow convinced his Nana to accompany him on a trip up the stairs. They stopped at the third landing, but little Shen’s enthusiasm could’ve carried them all the way up to the throne. The young Lord was awestruck when they arrived at a balcony, looked outside and watched the world before them turn pale.

He asked her if that was actually snow. It certainly fit his Nana’s description of it.

She said yes, it was actually snow, but there wasn’t much of it. Any more and it might stick to the grass and turn the ground white, white like Shen.

Shen asked if there would be more.

The Soothsayer admitted ignorance of the weather’s intentions. If there would be more, she could not say.

But she could see the future, couldn’t she?

Turning her gaze outside, a little smile on the Soothsayer’s drooping jaw betrayed her limited prescience. She admitted that some things, even to an all-seeing oracle like her, were unknown.

Shen was caught on whether he believed that. His Nana had an explanation for just about everything. Beside his bed she told many stories; she told him that fire first came to the Earth when a brave Peacock flew into the heavens and inhaled its essence. She told him about all the ships in the harbor, what they carried, where they came from, and where they were going.

Once, she told Shen that when snow gathered on the ground, it was a joy to play in, and some day when he was well enough to do so, they would build a great big snow peacock out in the ward.

Well, Shen thought himself well enough to do that. He was  _better_  now!

The Soothsayer turned to Shen, kept a wary smile. If only he listened when she said; “I’m afraid not, dear. For now, we must treat your condition delicately. You’ll get sick again, out there in the cold.”

Now… if only he listened. Would’ve been a quicker recovery. Would’ve been less of a burden on the Soothsayer. And yet, despite all the past damage, Shen couldn’t stay himself.

Maybe  _that_  was his crucial impression upon his father? Delirious five-year-olds weren’t equipped with the best judgment, but maybe, just maybe… that was what Feng saw in Shen. He found this lack of judgment that—even in all his supposed maturity—bubbled up to the surface and pointed to some kind of fundamental issue.

 _This_  haphazard stunt certainly would!

Shen’s absence would give Feng something tangible to worry about. But perhaps that was just what his father needed; he needed his priorities in order. He needed all his stupid, baseless assumptions of his son to be confirmed!

But what was the point of that, anyway? Shen knew his father was proud… probably.

He wasn’t ignorant to the way Feng spoke of him to the extended family, nor to the pleased look upon the old fowl’s face when he glanced at Shen and thought him unaware.

But he just had to keep up the act, didn’t he? He couldn’t say it outright. He had to be this hawk hovering over all—watching, scrutinizing, and micromanaging every aspect of Shen’s life without even touching it. The nature of their relationship would remain static; Shen would live in a crystal ball, and his father would watch from outside, sparsely interacting, only when it underwrote his intricate intentions.

But this internal conflict offered nothing but distraction; there was one matter Shen’s mind could settle.

Presently, Shen turned to watch the silhouette of a wolf dance about in the darkness of the morning. The canine figure jumped from one spot to another, hacked and pawed at the earth, hopped to a different spot and repeated the same dance. This creature, Shen thought, was animated like a rabbit on a bed of hot coals.

Cheng was making quick work of the Sacred Flame’s carefully manicured lawn. Whatever he thought buried out here, Shen only hoped it was worth the carnage. He watched the charade from his place at the base of the fortress wall, slumped over and sighed in guttural irritation.

Cheng, on the other hand, erupted with joy on one of his bouts of digging. He disappeared into a freshly-dug pit and yanked at something, stayed a moment, went on tugging against the ground, straining and growling. When he finally wrenched himself from the Earth, he came loose with a crunching  _pop._  The wolf arose, and Shen saw clenched in his maw a large iron hook, a section of rope, and quite a lot of dirt.

“Toldja it wassomewhere’round here,” Cheng mumbled. He trotted up to Shen, spat out the components of the grappling hook and laid them in the grass.

Shen’s gray pupils went to the rope, then back to Cheng, unimpressed.

“That’s all you wanted to show me?” he scoffed. “A rope?”

Cheng went to work tying it together. Attention fluctuating, he shot Shen an evasive glance.

“You’re seriously cold?” he asked.

“Yes, I  _am_  seriously cold,” Shen said.

Cheng laughed. “C’mon, it’s like, room temperature out here.”

“Room temperature?”

“Yeah, you know… it’s the regular temperature. Of a room.”

Shen shook his head, diverting his gaze to the full moon. Its halfway-sunken form along the western wall reminded him of his present predicament; he wondered if maybe there was still time to return to his bedroom, his parents none the wiser? And what hypothetical room was Cheng referring to? What temperature had it been assigned? How many alchemies would Shen have to read before encountering a quantitative analysis of this vague thing called  _room temperature_?

“You could just say you’re having second thoughts,” Cheng said, pulling the rope tight around itself.

“But we’re already here, aren’t we?”

“Nope!”

Cheng hurled the grappling hook over the edge of the old barrier. The hook found its mark and made a satisfying  _tink_ when it snugged up against a deep ridge between the battlements. Now, it wasn’t much to bite onto, but it would have to do.

Cheng was  _seriously_ intent on scaling that wall.

At the realization, Shen was forced from his slump by a surge of disbelief. He cast aside his outer layer, marched up to the wolf and shot him a measured glower—but again, the peachick’s upset was met by nothing but the wolf’s coy amusement.

Cheng’s triangular face just smiled down at him.

“You can’t be serious,” Shen pleaded. “You  _truly_ mean for us to leave the Palace grounds?”

“Hey, we made it this far,” Cheng said. “Besides, it ain’t that long a trip. Around a corner just past the old fighthouse. Only a few minutes out, nothing big.”

“ _Oh, right_ ,” Shen said with a little bouncing nod. “Nothing big at all. Why, just past the old fighthouse! If I recall correctly, we’d be well within the nearer market, where people will be mingling, setting up shop for the festival… and don’t you think, Cheng, it would seem…  _odd,_  to at least some of them, that their prince would be running around the city in nothing but his nightclothes? Without a lick of security, no less?” He paused and laughed, said; “My parents would find out in minutes! We’d be lucky to get within shouting distance of the market!”

“Who said anything about anyone recognizing you? Don’t you have, like, cousins and stuff? Just say you’re one of your cousins.”

Shen’s eyes fell half-lidded.

“So you’ve seen other Peacocks… that look like this.”

Cheng shrugged. “Well, no… but there’s gotta be a few of them out there. It’s not like you’re the only one in China.”

 _It’s not like I’m the only one in all China, is it?_ —there’s a question that befuddled him as a younger peachick.

 _He’s the only case we’re aware of,_ he once overheard the court physician saying. _There have been others back in the lineage with the same symptoms—the illness, the brittle frame, and an odd variation in the pigment, but none lacked it entirely, particularly in the irises and tail… we can at least be thankful he’s without the usual idiocy. More surprising to me, though, is the mortality. For three of those, two did not hatch. And for those that did…_

Shen sighed, expelling the memory.

“Just take my word for it.  _Someone_  will recognize me.”

Cheng’s rough palms gripped his end of the rope, squeezing it in some kind of discomfort. He pulled on it twice, making sure that it was snug, since he, with or without Shen, was going to have to use it.  _Without_  seemed more likely when he watched Shen saunter back to his blue cloak and scoop it up. The peachick threw it over his back, evidently cold.

If that wasn’t an admission of defeat, Cheng didn’t know what was. And  _besides_ , it wasn’t even cold out here!

“So, what?” Cheng challenged. “You’re just gonna give up and go home? After all we’ve done to get here?”

Shen bundled himself up nice and snug, slumped against the stone and eyed the Tower of the Sacred Flame. His gray pupils settled on the window to his room. How warm his bed must be…

Cheng put himself between Shen and the Tower.

“You can’t just give up.”

“What’s the point of it, really?”

Cheng was caught unwilling to answer that. Philosophical questions weren’t exactly his thing.

“Why risk it all?” Shen receded deeper into his thick cloak, his white head just barely poking out from the bundle of blue. “You don’t think my father will take measures? You think… somehow, that he’ll allow  _this_  to continue?”

The wolf’s paws squeezed tighter around the rope. Staring off into space with a pinch of frustration at his snout, Cheng’s gaze wandered in a way that suggested unsaid things.

“That’s  _separation_!” Shen said. “You’re courting separation! What else does this achieve? Have you honestly thought about it?”

“Look, I…“ Cheng sighed, mulling on a way to communicate something. “Maybe I need to explain-”

“And this!” Shen interrupted. “It’s just to anger my father, isn’t it? But  _he_  doesn’t deserve that. Nor does mother, or…”

“Get ahold of yourself, man!” the wolf erupted, gesturing to the Tower. “They won’t even know you were gone, how many times do I gotta say it?”

No matter how many times Cheng said it, his hollow assurances weren’t becoming any truer. Shen knew from the moment he left the sill his father was finding out one way or another. But for reasons that he found mysterious and disquieting, that only made it more enticing. Only now did he start to realize how stupid this impulsive venture was!

 _Why is it only now I search for an exit?_ Shen wondered.

Cheng crouched beside Shen in thought. Elbows on his knees, a tooth snagged his upper lip in a moment of contemplation.

“You know, this reminds me of the story of General Leopard,” he said. “You remember that one?”

The peachick looked down, back up at his friend.

“Older or Younger Leopard?”

“Uhm…” Cheng squinted. “Younger? I think. Yeah- it was Younger Leopard.”

Shen nodded. “Yes, the Ruthless Son whose armies were unstoppable. Centuries ago, he was the one who defeated the Four Kingdoms of the west… so, of course I remember him.”

Cheng nodded as well. “Yeah, he took on the three kingdoms, but it wasn’t easy for him. Leopard may have been fricken’ ruthless, but he had to face a lot of trials. He had doubts, and stuff like that.”

The first time Shen heard the story Cheng was about to tell, the Sacred Flame hosted a meeting of regional generals. Sure, he’d already read about it in the  _Marshal Annals_  by then, but military men had a way of breathing vigor into the tales of the dead.

“It was in the second year of the Yangtze campaign when it happened,” Cheng said, “when Leopard and his men got ambushed by squadrons of Xinan warriors. Like, he was ambushed  _bad_ , right out of nowhere! They charged from the ridges and destroyed everything in sight. No tents, no food, no reinforcements… nothing, all gone. Leopard didn’t have any time to respond. He was desperate. Legend goes that somehow, he alone escaped deep into the mountains of the Yangtze, but he got both his arms broke in the process.”

“No-no-no-no,” Shen broke in, “One of his arms. It was only his left.”

“One arm, both, left or right—whatever, same difference. Anyway, Leopard wandered through the ridges for days, with the enemy hot on his tail. Every night he could hear ‘em circling and taunting. He knew when they were close by the light of their torches… he knew where they’d been by their prints in the dirt. The General had to pay attention to even the little things to avoid getting captured, and what’s more—he didn’t have nothing to eat but dirt, poison mushrooms, and Qīngwā moss!”

Belief in his eyes, Cheng leaned closer to Shen, whose long brows furled in uncertainty.

“Three days later, they had him cornered against the face of a mountain,” Cheng said. “Either he was gonna get captured or he was gonna climb over to the other side. There was just nowhere else to go… can you imagine that?”

Shen didn’t fully imagine it. Instead, he found himself distracted by an intrusive thought; the only image occupying his mind was that of his warm bed, his mother and father standing in wait for him on the backdrop of the harbor… and then, some snippet of the Soothsayer’s gentle voice from too many years ago… a bowl of soup and a hanging scroll and a little red box of gum-spice imbued with that peculiar pungency of old age…

But there  _was_  something undeniable about the image of Younger Leopard scaling a mountain without the use of his arms.

“It’s… very hard to believe,” Shen said.

“But he did it! All the odds were stacked against him, but Leopard scaled the whole thing with just his teeth and his elbows, even with the universe screaming at him to lay down and die… but  _nothing_  could intimidate him! He was  _strong_ , and- and he was  _fierce_ , and he was  _free_. And when he gave orders, nobody dared disobey him! That’s why he wouldn’t give up! And if he  _did_  give up, Shen, you really think we’d be talking about him hundreds of years later?”

Shen shifted around in his bundle. “Well, when you put it like that, I suppose-”

“What I’m saying is…” Cheng began, covertly scooping up another handful of dirt. “…you need to be more like Leopard.”

Eyes darting down to the lump of dirt, Shen wondered even more where Cheng was going with this. There was something mischievous in his narrowed eyes—something devious in the insane snarl wrinkling up his lip.

It really begged what segment of Leopard’s life the wolf was drawing on now?  _Certainly not_ the part where he was forced to eat dirt?

 _Oh heavens,_ Shen thought.  _Certainly not that!_

It was outside of Shen’s anticipation that Cheng moved forward with a giddy leap, placing a muddy finger right between the fowl’s eyes. There, upon his white forehead, the wolf dabbed a single black dot, eliciting a squawk of verbal protest from the young Lord. Shen had to drop his warm cloak to push back at Cheng, batting, shoving, squawking something fierce.

This, of course, did not deter him in the least.

“Have you gone mad?!” Shen demanded when his half-efforts proved futile. The furious peachick squinted as Cheng continued to place muddy dots across his face, down his neck, even lower to the white collar of his silk pajamas.

“Hold still,” Cheng said. “You’re messing it up!”

Shen cringed when he felt the wolf’s maculate paws poke around at his wings. It seemed Cheng was intent on having every inch of Shen wear the filth, sprouting tailfeathers included.

Something sharp—a biting pang of anger, humiliation—something within Shen stabbed him at the magnitude of this extravagant mess.

 _Heavens provide I’m washed before home,_ Shen thought.  _Heavens provide mother and father never see me in such a defaced state._

The thought brought over him a grim resignation. It was resignation that, even if he were to outmaneuver Cheng and reprove him for this vile act (which Shen thought well within his ability), he would remain filthy. He could peck him and thwack him and expose him to an arsenal of verbal misgivings, but the filth would remain.

Thankfully, Cheng quickly finished with his work. He wiped his paws down his sewn robes and quickly trotted back to the edge of the Palace moat, crouching on his hands and knees.

“Come look,” he said, glancing pointedly at the stream’s unperturbed surface.

And so Shen came, but with a hesitant pace. He stepped beside the wolf, paused and stared down at his reflection, watching it come clear with the waning of a gentle ripple. The peachick looking back up at him wore the spots of the long-deceased Leopard the Younger. His body, like Leopard’s, was spotted. And his situation, like Leopard’s, was less than desirable. Shen could at least admire Cheng’s attention to detail… the dots were placed with a pleasing regularity, and they managed an appreciable degree of historical accuracy. If black-and-white-spotted peacocks actually existed, Shen could definitely pass for one.

Perhaps general troublemaking wasn’t Cheng’s true calling. Perhaps it was art.

“Pretty good, huh?” the wolf asked.

“Breathtaking,” Shen sighed.

“Now they’ll have to believe you’re one of your cousins.”

Shen’s demeanor brightened at that, and he couldn’t hold back a small chuckle. “That’s still our story, isn’t it?”

“Yeah… isn’t it?”

Shen looked at the grappling hook still embedded at the top of the wall. Cheng, too, turned up to admire his handiwork.

“Just past the old fighthouse,” Shen muttered. “And after that it’s straight home.”

“In and out. They won’t suspect a thing.”

 _There’s something true,_ Shen thought.  _They won’t_ suspect _a thing. They will know it._

But as Cheng went onward, making his way up the wall, Shen stood, watched, and recalled…

Once, many years ago, little Shen was amazed at how pale everything became. The ward was covered in the whitest snow—white so that his wings were indistinguishable from the earth below him. Venturing out into that mysterious world meant ignoring the advice of the Soothsayer, but his curiosity beckoned.

That curiosity shriveled when little Shen realized he ventured too far. Right here he stood when the snow picked up—picked up so he couldn’t see the world in front of him. Couldn’t hardly see the Tower. Heard the rush of the wind but not himself calling for help.

As he lay there lifeless, half-buried in the snow, the first sound he could separate from the wind was a woman’s voice. It called out from behind and brought trudging hoofsteps with it. Though at first it was difficult to understand who she was or what she was saying, he came to recognize the voice, the embrace, and the warmth of his Nana.

Exactly what she said was unclear. Shen often wondered if this whole memory was farcical—perhaps reconstructed from a leftover piece of a dream or invented from another section of his five-year-old brain—but one component seemed undeniably real; the Soothsayer whispered assurances of safety, and though they weren’t clear, two words of hers stuck out from the rest.

Again and again she whispered with an instinctual repetition;  _my son._

It was during winter, years ago, out in this same patch that the Soothsayer rescued little Shen.

But this time, Shen knew his Nana would not find him.


	5. Chapter 5

“He was standing right here!” Lady Zhen anguished. “I kissed him goodnight and, and— _my son_  was right here!”

Where the peahen’s jerking motion pointed was an empty section of tile at the foot of Shen’s bed. The smooth, dark stone seemed to shimmer with her son’s absence. Instead of that lovely peachick—her dear Little Shen—there was her own worry-stricken face staring back. Zhen’s pink-blue reflection was joined by that of a composed antelope, pale-furred snout with long horns—her personal guardsman. His eyes, like hers, weighed heavily with concern.

The antelope cleared his throat somewhere behind her like he could physically expel the mounting tension.

“Milady,” he began carefully, “Every available creature has been dispatched. Be it this room, this palace, the city _…_ I can assure that nothing will be left alone, certainly not until we find him. It is being handled, I just need you to remain-”

 _Being_   _handled!_

Zhen shook her head dismissively; to her, the words were nothing but hollow pacifiers. She turned up to face not the antelope, but the empty bed.

The sheets were taught corner-to-corner, fold-over-fold without a shadow of a wrinkle. Shen’s own doing, surely—she, at the very least, instilled him with the Peacock tidiness etiquette… but there was always the palace attendants. Their hand, too, was trained in noble housekeeping, and Shen did usually leave them to their menial duties.

Here it was; at some unspecified moment after Shen was tucked in, an  _unknown party_  involved themselves in the delicate making of his bed. Zhen’s heart fluttered helplessly at the thought.  _A conspiracy?_  Heavens, no—she eschewed the thought as soon as it arrived. It couldn’t be. Such were the happening of legends, of myths, certainly not of her household!

Then, in a moment of amplified distress, she caught herself ogling the place Shen stood last night.

“Milady, please,” the antelope called, kneeling to look her in the eyes. She scarcely noticed his hoof on her shoulder. It couldn’t still her accelerated breaths. It couldn’t return her child.

She only blinked at the anarchic investigation unfolding about the room, attendants and guards scouring the area for clues; two antelope across from her disassembled and sorted the contents of Shen’s dresser; a hare busied himself at the cracked shutter of the bedside window and dusted it with a paw; a short canine fellow of indeterminate breed mopped the floor with his nose, sniffing for… what? Dirt? Footprints?  _Blood_?

Zhen squeezed her eyes shut and imagined again the face of her son. But she found only his gaunt, white-feathered frame, his pathetic body drawing pathetic, sputtered breaths. That wasn’t right.

No matter the effort, she couldn’t picture Shen as he was in the present. Only a younger, sicker version of him came to her. It was son they had resigned all hope for. It was the son whose malformed body was not to endure the summer.

_The son we abandoned._

“Milady, calm yourself, now… you  _must_ take deep breaths.”

Then, as if to eradicate the awful silence that had befallen the scene, a heavy gust pushed in from the entrance. The scattered attendants perked up to find the doors thrust open by a pair of blue wings spanning tip-to-tip the width of the frame.

Lord Feng appeared there with a certain disheveled aura about him. No matter the hour, he was still dressed in his morning silk. His frayed crest, too, no doubt suggested his unanticipated sprint through the halls. The blue garb fell behind him as he rushed in, stopped and scanned at the palace hands.

They met him with looks of surprise, of fear, stared stupidly at him and did nothing. Struck with disdain, Feng narrowed his eyes at the lot of them. Without his direction they were, unfortunately, quite useless.

He quickly spotted his wife across the room. She stood there leaning into the antelope, her breaths unnaturally rapid.

 _Direction must wait_ , Feng thought.

Upon noticing his Lord, the consoling antelope released the peahen and took a single, nervous step back. A certain mixture of embarrassment and fear expanded the whites of his eyes.

“Move!” Feng ordered in his sprint to Zhen’s side. Blue wings went wide, curling tight around the peahen as his torso crashed into hers. Close now, he felt her tremble. Her heart raced between the rapid undulation of her breaths. Indeed, Feng fought to keep himself from slipping into the same tempting panic. A momentary trembling sensation took his wings before he willed them still. His grief was the same as hers.  _But I must be calm for you—for Shen,_ he reminded himself.

Presently, he loosened his embrace to put himself in her view. Zhen only blinked at him with an open beak.

“Look at me,” he whispered. “Just look at me, now… it’s going to be alright. We are going to find him.”

Zhen murmured; “What have we done?”

“We’re doing everything we can,” he assured her. “The Guard’s been sent to search the palace. I have a party scanning the barracks, two more at the perimeter-“

“ _What have we done?_ ”

Feng hesitated. His long brows seemed to pucker. “What-?”

A beat of pressure at Feng’s chest took Zhen from his grasp. She pried from him and went two paces back. Feng steadied himself, watching her carefully. Zhen’s breathing had stabilized, but her widened eyes were possessed by a stiff perturbance he hadn’t seen in quite some time.

The room turned its attention inward, awkwardly still, watching husband and wife, Lord and Lady.

“Followed the rites,” she spoke. “Measured the egg, prescribed a name. We  _had a name_ , Feng. And we couldn’t have been happier. We were overjoyed.”

“Hey, hey…” Feng’s skinny leg hovered above the floor in front of him, talons clacking against tile as his weight shifted into the step. “We must stay focused, both of us. I know what you’re going through, but we just cannot-“

Zhen exhaled in protest, matching Feng’s pace with her own slow retreat.

“We had a name!” She cried. “For Heaven’s sake, we  _loved him._  We loved him more than anything in the Universe. We spoke to him, sang to him… slept with him, our own unhatched child. But when we  _saw him_ …!” Her head swiveled slow in a sideways motion.

More eyes came trained on Feng than Zhen. Their collective attention followed his wife’s lead, pulling on him with a horrible, omnidirectional gravity.  _How uncouth, this spectacle of familial discourse!_  A quick disarming was needed here. Adverse appearances aside, Feng did not like where his thoughts were being led. Long-buried urgings nucleated within; familiar ones were being driven into unexplored territory. Disarming was needed.

Stopping his approach, Feng’s voice came out marked with grief, quavering; “We did… only what we thought best. There’s no changing that, Dear. We have only the present to attend to. There’s Shen, out there somewhere. Is he not what demands our attention?”

“We  _abandoned him_ , Feng!”

The words struck into the peacock with the piercing weight of an invisible spear, finding its mark deep in his senses.  _We abandoned him!_ Here were words whose presence had been suggested by the involuntary language of her body, words which beleaguered him in restless nights. How different to hear it said aloud,  _we abandoned him!_ That’s what she called it.  _A_ _bandonment!_

“No, we…“ Feng trailed. “We  _did not_ -“

“Do not give me that!” she rasped at him. Zhen loomed before him like a wayward phantom.

“You certainly didn’t want to raise a dying child,” she said. “And I don’t blame you for it. I didn’t, either… I couldn’t prolong the suffering of a doomed chick. How could I attach myself to that? How could I make myself love him?”

Zhen shifted like she wanted to move but couldn’t commit to any one direction. She drew a breath and watched her husband with attention so devout it gave him the impression they were the sole occupants of their son’s bedroom.

“We didn’t think he would live to learn his name. He couldn't have been viable. Not for the family… not for Gongmen. What power in Heaven could look down upon that? But we…  _spirits,_  we just sweep him under the carpet like rubbish! That’s it; wait a few months, let the grief pass. Let the Soothsayer bear that! Let him die with  _her_ , just not _us!_ ” Zhen drew a shallow breath.

“Wasn’t that it, Feng? Leave him to die with the goat!”

The peacock gently shook his head. Zhen didn’t mean that—she didn’t know what she was saying, wasn’t thinking straight. This regretful thread of conversation owned no basis in reality, and to even humor it with a response-

And yet… Feng shook his head. “You think that… what? We asked for the circumstances? It was not our decision, Zhen! It was placed upon us, I tell you— _placed upon us!_  What were we supposed to do? How could we have known-?”

“Shen didn’t ask for it,” She shot back. “He didn’t ask to be born sick. The Soothsayer didn’t ask to be his caregiver. It was placed upon her. How can’t you see this? Don’t you get it?”

A glint of grim conviction in her faint-pink eyes, Zhen stepped to Feng and put herself just in front of him. Their beaks were an idle twitch from brushing together. Feng swallowed.

“He thinks her more his mother than I,” she seethed. “Even when he was well, Feng, we couldn’t hardly look at him. Couldn’t touch the son we never raised, and why not?  _The original connection was never there_. We neglected to make it when it would’ve meant something. That’s what he shares with her, Feng.  _It’s with her!_  What we do now is just halfhearted patchwork.” She aimed a wing readily at the empty bed. “You have it here in front of you, don’t you see?”

An idle sliver in Feng’s beak widened, closed for a lack of a response. What could he say to that? She was right. Shen remained closer to the Soothsayer than to either of his parents, and though his maturing mind seemed to be shifting away from a conventional  _parent-child_  dynamic with the goat, Feng knew that emotional bonds extended well beyond surface behavior. The waning presence of hugs, or kisses, or…  _lullabies_  in their interactions couldn’t convey the strength of the bond. Its immature aspects were destined to fall away with time.

Others, if left alone, would remain or grow stronger.

Feng pondered then at his own lack of affectionate behavior towards Shen. He couldn’t recall the last time he hugged his son…

Then, as if concluding her husband’s thought, Zhen cried out; “ _We abandoned our only son!_ ”

“ _I know!_ ” came Feng’s response, an inelegantly reluctant whine. He drew a shaky breath, managed; “I know, and there is not a day I don’t think about it!”

And then it fell around the couple—silence most punctual.

As the peahen stood with him, her eyes trained on his, the moment settled into clarity; this was a step into unexplored territory. The sincerity of his admission, his  _I know_ , captivated her. Feng scarcely spoke mournfully.

The years hardened him one way or another, but Zhen once knew a vibrant young fowl whose emotions flowed freely, a peacock of sixteen years…

…and summer found them along the banks of the Yangtze delta plucking azaleas and skipping stones. They ventured far from Gongmen and into the fertile lowlands to the west, deep in the valley where their only existence was between the hills, the river and the endless sky. Amid blotches of silver grass and rice paddy they exchanged dreams, fears, filled each other’s heads with the old family gossip. Feng didn’t often speak of his father, but when he did, it was with her and out on the river, where they were most certainly alone. She would perch beside the adolescent Lord when he sobbed ripples onto the water. There was a time when her husband mourned…

“We faltered,” Feng told her in the present. “I won’t deny it, Zhen, we made a mistake… and here—now, years later, we’re still trying to make it all right. Isn’t that all we ever wanted, Dear? We just wanted everything to be all right. For us. For our family… you and I and our precious little boy.” He puffed.

Zhen’s beak wobbled behind a terse nod. “Feng, when we find him… things are going to change.”

“Yes… yes,” he agreed. “No more patchwork. No more being the absent Lord and Lady up in the throne room, no more of that. We must be there for him, always. If we can commit to it—not just to  _say it_  but to  _do it—_ we can make things right with our boy, I promise you… and you know, this could turn out to be beneficial. Between us and Shen, I mean. It could bring us closer, put things into perspective. I’m certain he knows this.” Feng’s beak bent into a weak smile. “Just look at the day he chose. Mid-Autumn.”

“Mm…” Zhen sniffed. “He’s always been a troublesome one.”

“Mhm,” Feng hummed warmly, leaning to her. “Now, this is an opportunity for growth. There’s no feeling sorry for ourselves, here, no dwelling on the mistakes of the past. We’d be doing him wrong. Just take everything as it comes and… for Shen’s sake, keep yourself composed. Can you do that for him?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I can do that.”

He nodded.

A sliver of morning’s first light crept above the windowsill, narrowing Feng’s eyes to peer past his wife and into the city. There, above the horizon formed by the stony fortress wall, dark silhouettes of rooftops appeared before him like inventions of papercraft—flat, childish cutouts under the yellow wash of the sun. A cloud of coastal mist had befallen the scene, serving to desaturate the already dun-colored structures.

Somewhere in that fog, tucked in the maze of buildings and concessions and their sprawling shadows, Shen wandered along at the whim of his youthful impulses.

As he pondered the scene, Feng’s and Zhen’s bodies drifted together in a light embrace. Whoever initiated it, Feng did not know, nor did he care. The Lord simply tucked his generous wings around his Lady. She responded in kind, hummed into the curvature of his neck. It was subtle, hushed serenity to the peacock’s ears. A thoroughly warm sensation.

For the first time in what seemed like years, Feng felt that everything was really going to turn out all right. Just for a moment, stood with his wife in the room where their son hatched eleven years prior, the fleeting illusions of the Universe ensured his family’s stability. Its vastness would place Shen on the throne that his line might flourish—that the Peacock name might withstand the turbulence of the coming days. Posterity would look to Gongmen like a beacon of virtue; they would gaze upon the Tower of the Sacred Flame and find it a symbol of peace, prosperity, and good government. And if the politics of that faraway age provided, Gongmen might become the residence of an Emperor… one of Shen’s grandsons, perhaps.

Feng sighed into the open room with his head against hers.

“You’ll be in the garden,” he said. “The escort waits out in the hall. Any news from the aerial scouts comes straight to you… I’ve sent for the Soothsayer, too. Soon as we know more, I’m with you… is that alright?”

Silent, she squeezed tight around him. Feng’s talons bore into the tile under her grip.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He whispered back; “I love you, too.”

Zhen parted from him with clingy reluctance, her silk dragging from his. She did not look back on her way out; the doors swung open at her gesture, and when they closed the peahen was gone. Her lovely warmth—the softness of her touch held firm in the Peacock’s mind like a lantern’s dwindling afterglow. Facing the room, Feng allowed this sensation to pass over him.

The scene before him was, for the most part, unchanged; a few attendants had departed since he last looked, but the ones who remained wore the same distressed faces.  _The reckless imbeciles!_  Had they assumed their own delegation in his absence? If it was theirs to decide, he certainly wouldn’t have instructed—

“Milord.”

Feng startled. The greeting belonged to someone at his right. The voice, generous in pitch, was that of a thin antelope dressed in clerical robes. Narrow eyes looked at him through sketch lines of dark and light fur down the length of the ungulate’s face.

“Ao,” Feng nodded. “Yes, yes—go ahead.”

“The Emissary’s gone,” Ao said. “We made sure he didn’t catch wind of the situation on the way out. Not even his escort was informed. Now, when we searched the perimeter…”

The antelope’s hooves clicked along the floor when he stopped at the window. Feng bent beside Ao and followed his raised hoof to a spot out the window and down on the ground. Three muddy pits in the lawn formed the corners of a lopsided triangle there. Freshly dug, too; the earth was still dark with moisture. Ao gestured higher, picking out a spot poised at the base of the stone wall, a distant splotch of Peacock blue standing out against the dark stone.

“One of the young Lord’s heavy silks,” Ao commented. “We checked it. The attendants found the same item missing from his wardrobe. How it got there—or why it was left there—I am not sure. It is covered in filth. Likely something to do with those pits.”

The peacock squinted. Shen, of course, would never voluntarily roll in the mud. He just wasn’t a filthy child. Something truly was amiss.

“You’re certain?”

“Yes, Milord. Quite certain.”

Feng switched his gaze between the wall and the ground, focusing on nothing and everything. It made sense that Shen would’ve dressed for the cold. Knowing his meager form, though, it eluded the peacock why his son would chance exposure in the first place. He could risk a cold like that, the peachick knew it all too well… was the allure of defying his father so  _enthralling?_

“…and what of the Soothsayer?”

Ao hesitated. “We’ve not been able to locate her. The young Lord’s station reported seeing her exit the room last night. As far as I’m aware, this was the last she was seen.”

Feng’s heart skipped a beat. Two missing— _a conspiracy?_ No, no— not with his adversaries. They weren’t so bold. If Mother taught him anything, it was that a wolf never outran his scent; no scent lingered here. At least, not an obvious one.

Taking a step back, Feng felt something catch on a talon on his left foot. He raised it to his wing and let it drape over his feathers; it was a strip of black cloth torn lengthwise, just long enough to be tied around a medium-sized pillar. The ribbon was speckled with little gray hairs and, when Feng sniffed it, stank of sweat, filth, and…  _mongrel_.

He dropped the ribbon, went to Ao.

“ _Wolves_!” he shouted. “Wolves have been here. You and the Commander fan out into the city. Check the docks, the market—everything! Leave nothing untouched! We may have an abduction on our hands. Waste no time!”

The Colonel frantically nodded. “Yes, Milord, but where will we find you?”

The other antelope moved at his orders, filing out the door in an orderly line. Feng leered closer to Ao with a maddeningly expectant look, eyes wide and all.

“Have you brought what I asked?”

The antelope nodded, reached quickly into his satchel. He withdrew three metallic feathers. Each shining piece was cusped at one end by a quill-sized ring and pointed at the other by a whetted tip. Feng swiped up the blades, weaved them into the plumage of his right wing. The only trace of their being was a little scraping sound as Feng rubbed one steel feather against another.

“I assume they’re still down there,” Feng said. “In the basement.”

“Two of them, Milord, but they’ve been  _questioned_  before… just not about this.”

“And there’s no tell of a plot. A conspiracy.”

“No, nothing like that. Not so far.”

With that the peacock nodded, heaving his body up and off the ground. A burst of air shot forth as he whipped his wings, body, and legs in one violent yawing motion, sending him out the window like an arrow from the bowstring. The antelope stood and watched him glide out of sight.

Ao really didn’t know what Feng expected to coax from the captive wolves. With what they’d been put through so far, he considered his own methods adequately cruel. Perhaps seeing the peachick’s father would elicit a different response—set the fire under their feet, so to speak. Such tactics had proven useful on the vast steppes of the north.

Years of campaigning, however, bestowed one with the distinctions between the different types of barbarians.

 _Mongolians speak much sooner than their southern descendants,_  Ao thought. Then he lifted his hoof from the sill and set out towards the city.


	6. Chapter 6

The peachick clambered over the rooftop’s edge, winced at the oppressive glow of the sun that met him there. Even from his place overlooking Gongmen’s market district, the Palace pierced the sky with an air of divine rigidity. Its shadow, doubly long, sprawled from its buttressed gates all the way to the western harbor.

Really, its immensity shouldn’t have impressed him only now. Shen had lived there since he hatched, peered up at it from the soft confines of the Palace yard. He wondered if it was simply a matter of perspective. Yes, he thought it likely. Living in the shadow of that behemoth would fill even the foolhardiest subject with awe. That was it.

Shen dusted himself off and looked to a wolf across the building’s stony ridge from him. Cheng sat alone with his stubby legs dangling over the edge. Watching the city in silence, the only thing keeping him from a fifty-foot drop were his forepaws pressed smooth against the clay shingles. Shen crept over to join him.

A narrow alley below them widened into a sprawling plaza. Shen couldn’t see much from between the buildings—nothing beyond motion and color. Vibrant silks flashed here, there with the passage of distant creatures. Red and yellow lanterns were strung generously across the buildings, swaying against the vacant autumn sky.

Though obscured, the market was, to say the least, populated. Clicking hooves and scraping claws filled Shen’s ears. A chorus of conversations could be heard even at this distance.

Something about the scene was… gravitating. Perhaps Cheng was under the same spell.

“Quite a lot of them,” Shen said.

“Hm?” Cheng perked up. “Oh, yeah… yeah, no kidding.”

Shen perched at the wolf’s left and lowered to sit. The colored silks continued to dance outside the alley.

“Weren’t this many last year,” Cheng said. “Heck, it ain’t even midnight… guess it really was a good harvest, huh?”

Shen shrugged—he had nothing to compare it to. His father would know more about the yields than him, anyway. “Must’ve been, but I wouldn’t know. This, well… this is the first festival I’ve seen.”

Cheng let a moody, almost judgmental sigh at that.

“Oh, hush. Don’t make like it’s  _my_  fault. Once you’ve had Peacocks for parents you can judge me all you want.”

The wolf just shook his head.

“You need to get out more, seriously. Only time you leave that tower’s when I drag you outta there. Can’t always be like that, man. You’ll grow into a weirdo. There’s the story about the old wolf that was afraid of the sun, wouldn’t ever leave his den? His skin, like, melted off, and, y’know, he ate babies. You really want to turn out like that?”

Shen side-eyed the wolf, found him straight-lipped and lacking in mischief. He was serious. But then, Cheng was not a stranger to such hyperbole.

Shen smiled.

“That has to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

“Well…” Cheng shrugged. “It’s true. The carpenter in my village told it. He knows a lot of those old stories. He’ll tell ‘em if you stop and listen.”

A southern breeze spurred Shen to hem up his pajamas. Crisp, the wind was accentuated by the mild saltiness of the coast, a familiar scent mixed with the foreign; the alleys carried a dusty aroma, and the foul ambience of spent powder lingered everywhere in the air. An unheavenly mixture—irritated his nostrils, a little.

It couldn’t, however, extinguish his curiosity. The city would eventually be his, after all. Why not familiarize himself with the  _real_  Gongmen? Shen figured only a fool would neglect the opportunity.

…though there was once, when from the stone-lined apartment room beneath the Sacred Flame, the walls flickered orange with the warmth of an oil lamp when the Soothsayer told of Mid-Autumn. Warm, nested beside him, her hushed tones spoke of the crowds, games, and high spirits. Distant provinces flocked the harbor, brought foreign goods and bits of provincial news. At night, families would gather to set alight what fireworks weren’t reserved for New Year…

Shen swallowed in a sore throat, thought;  _Only so much can be learned from the comfort of the bed._

A scraping sound dragged through the alley beneath them, a shrunken rabbit hauling an oversized crate of radishes. Shen reasoned the largest of the vegetables to be about the size of the mammal’s head.

“Well, I’m sure your village is overjoyed with the excess,” he said.

Cheng paused. “Yeah, sure, everyone’s happy about it. But my village ain’t selling. No one really farms, where I’m from.”

 _Oh, right,_  Shen disciplined himself. Despite their tedium, his father’s sermons  _had_  touched on the  _natural arrangement of wolf society._

“I see… so your uncle’s an exception?”

“Pretty much,” Cheng said. “All my neighbors, they just work down in the pits.”

Shen, presently uncertain where to guide this conversation, basked silently in the warmth of the sun.

“Uncle’s plot is pretty far from home,” Cheng continued. “North from where the pandas are. He says a long time ago, a lot of wolves used to farm, but they don’t anymore—used to farm where he does, but now they don’t. They all just mine now.”

“Right…” Shen nodded, turned to shoot his friend a reassuring smile. “But you’ve already made up your mind on what you want to be.”

The wolf gave a short, resolute nod.

“I was born to be a Palace guard, man. It’s my destiny.”

“Of course,” Shen teased. “They’ll just be begging to sign you on.”

Cheng’s brow loosened as his lips crackled into a weak grin. “Pfft, shut up- you’ll see. One of these days I’ll be the Guard Commander, and then who’s gonna be laughing?”

“Me, because you’ll have to do everything as I say.”

“Oh yeah?” Cheng challenged. “And what if I don’t?”

“Then, I suppose…”

Shen sprang from his relaxed position. Spinning, he jutted a single feather into the wolf’s broad chest.

“…I’ll have to  _stick a dagger in your heart!”_

But Cheng barely even flinched. He simply brushed the feather aside, meeting Shen’s challenge with… passivity?

Shen withdrew his wing in disappointment. He expected some kind of response, anyway—a pounce, a growl at the very least—anything but this mood he’d fallen into. Not an hour ago, Cheng was the one convincing him to partake in this foolish idea. Now he seemed unable to enjoy it.

Legs swaying back and forth, the wolf pointed his snout at the ocean, to the west. Shen himself did not know what to look at. There was the ocean, the market, a brick wall… and then, the rabbit below them had since moved on with his load of vegetables.

Was he supposed to say something?

“Cheng?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Are you, ah…?”

 _Heavens_ , was he absolutely terrible at this kind of inquiry. Shen hadn’t the slightest familiarity with it. To verbalize such things just felt weird, and bad, and mushy, and, well, what if the words came out  _wrong?_  The last thing he wanted was to make Cheng uncomfortable.

No, the wolf wasn’t a feeler—there was something they had in common.

After hesitating a moment, Shen cleared his throat. “Well, are you ready to keep exploring?”

“Uh-huh,” Cheng said and rose to his feet. “Not much time left, anyway… scaffold over there’ll let us down.”

Shen nodded. “Let’s get a move on, then.”

* * *

 

Pipe clenched in his teeth, the old goat squinted up at the bustling market, back down to the blank silk in his lap. It was midmorning and the people would not be still. His brush, however, remained dormant, ever patient in its jade vessel.

The goat inhaled, drawing the bitter vapor into his lungs. Then, scraping,  _moping_ —a fitful noise sounded beside him. A frown touched his lips in exhalation.

“Something troubles you, Sunshine,” he said. “Where’s your mother got off to?”

No response, then the crunch of a heavy object being set down. Hoofsteps followed it, and a short, cream-colored goat came to his side. Between her stubby horns was a thin snout sagged down by a look of fatigue, wrists white with flour, lumber arms entombed by a dirt-covered vest.

“Mom?” the youth asked, dragging her wrist along her brow. “She’s around here somewhere. We, um, ran out of sugar… and she’s off to get more.”

The elder released another puff of smoke.

“No sugar, eh? Well, sounds like her. Y’be married so long you learn what to expect, bleh-heh-heh.”

“Dad…” The daughter sighed. “I think she’s just high-strung, y’know, with the mooncakes already behind schedule. And, well- look at this place. That’s a lot of mouths. I haven’t seen the market so…  _full_. She really needs all the help she can get.”

“You indictin’ me, kiddo? You know I never been a good cook. She wouldn’t want me helping, anyway, not after  _last year_.”

“Yeah, well, baking isn’t your calling. You’re more of a, um…”

“A  _hobby_ , she calls it!” the elder puffed. He snatched the brush from his inkwell with his nose billowing gray plumes. “And let her, too, when my robes are lined with gold!” He waved the instrument at the crowds shifting across the market. “See, these foreigners wonder up at that peatower like there’s a hole carved in the sky. Imagine what they’d pay to take it home  _with’em!_  Lookee behind me, kiddo, I drew up that one this morning…”

Behind him, pinned to a disused clothesline, his daughter’s overly-suspicious eyes scrutinized the Tower of the Sacred Flame inked upon a three-foot hanging scroll. The traces of flame and pillar made for a scarce black-and-white scene, each brushstroke bearing the uneven weight of her father’s rheumatic tremors. She opened her mouth but had nothing to say.

With the shifting of his jaw, the elder’s pipe bent to bisect the shriveled black crescent that was his nose.

“Something’s really the matter, then?”

“It’s just… look, Dad, over there.”

The daughter motioned to the market. Between a green-robed pig and a purple-robed sheep, a black-and-white-spotted peachick walked alone. The little one’s gaze snapped nervously to every minute sound or movement, steps slow and overcautious. By the swivel of his beak, it was clear he was on the lookout for something, or someone.

The young goat leaned to whisper; “ _Goodness_ , is that not our Prince?”

“Our Prince?” The elder cradled his jaw…  _strange_ , he thought, since the young lord wasn’t set to arrive ‘til noon. Early as it was, the sun hadn’t yet surmounted the tower. “Mm… it’s a little early for it, don’t you think?”

“I know, you’re right… but how many peacocks do you see, just- walking around the city? And  _look at his feathers!_  They’re just like Uncle said; white as a mountaintop! Who else could it be?”

Well, she was right. The peachick  _certainly_  stood out from his environment; he was a delicate thing in the rough, a refined creature filed in with the teeming multitude. Distinct as a lotus bloom on an empty pond.

…but the brush was a subtle thing, poised loose in the goat’s hoof.

With a high squawk, the little one scrambled from the path of a hurried rickshaw. He scampered from the crowd, went still and inspected himself; his feathers, his meager frame, his cutting gray beak were all unharmed. The only part of him not spared the weight of the cart was the tail end of his robes, which, upon his dismayed examination, was found in shreds.

“Jeez. I think we should tell someone, Dad. What if it really is him? I mean, he could be lost, or scared, or-”

“ _Hey, you!_ ” the elder called, readying the brush on the canvas.

The peachick startled from his self-inspection and fell on his rear.

“Yes,  _you!_  Little one. C’mere.”

The daughter pulled close, cautioned; “ _Father?_  What are you doing-?”

A blank stare and nothing else from the peachick, like he was frozen, or dead. The elder invited him with a warm smile, crooked teeth wide and breathing smoke. His daughter’s hooves pressed into his shoulders; she wasn’t as welcoming, more just timid. She hadn’t changed much since when she was little.

The peachick rose at his own hesitant pace and made his way over. When he stopped, he swallowed and spoke quietly; “…yes?”

“My daughter here, well…” The goat’s brow pinched into a studious squint while the brush made traces below.  “She thinks you’re the young heir. We just wanted to know if you were or not, that’s all.”

The peachick looked above the elder, staring blankly at the daughter. Her hooves immediately curled tighter.

“Well, kid?” the elder asked. “Are ya or aren’t ya?”

Still staring up at her, he said; “…no.”

“You look a mighty lot like him. Not a lot of peacocks walking around here. Just an observation, y’see.”

The diminutive peachick leveled his gaze with the elder’s. “You’ve seen him before?”

“Me? No, I personally have not, though I know some who have. Say he’s got snow-white feathers like yours. Say he’s small for his age, small like you.”

The peachick blinked at the silk in the elder’s lap, conjuring up a quick response.

“Well…” he began, “that’s true. But I have black spots. And, ah… the Prince does not.”

“So  _you’ve_  seen him before?” the younger goat mustered.

Shen swallowed. “…yes?”

“Mm. I see. Lucky one, y’are.” The elder glanced between the peachick and the drawing of him. “On what occasion was this?”

“On the occasion of… uh…”

Shen looked left, right, spotted a few faces in the market who’d taken up spectating. They did so in passing glances, looked askance in an elusive dismay. When he caught them staring, their snouts turned horizontal; creatures pulled away, whistled with their hooves and whatnot stepping uncomfortably. Their expressions weren’t much different from the daughter’s. Had  _they_  been sent for him?

“You alright there, kid? Not trying to interrogate ya, what with so many questions-”

“ _Leopard!”_ Shen blurted out. “I’m his cousin. My name is Leopard. That’s how I’ve seen him. Yes. I’m his cousin.”

The elder frowned and withdrew his hoof from the canvas.

“Well, erm… alright, Leopard. Forgive me if I frightened you. Don’t mean to be so intrusive.”

The daughter’s grip raised from her father’s low shoulders. Her brow tilted apologetically. “Yes, um… yeah, that’s my fault, little guy. Sorry for putting you on the spot like that. Sometimes I just, y’know, jump to, ah- conclusions.”

Shen scarcely heard them. He turned again and saw the sun breaching the jutting roof of his ancestral home.

Scanning the sunlit market, he found that the spectators had since multiplied; here was an antelope, and there two conversing sheep. A dumbfounded rabbit ogled him from the safety of his radish crate, leaned to whisper his bemusement to an unseen companion, lips mouthing,  _’Is that Shen?’_

The rabbit wasn’t fooled. Now was the time to escape. Then the elder’s small voice came again.

“You taking off, Leopard? If you need directions, my daughter here can tag along with you-“

“No,” Shen said. “Bye, um- thanks. Thank you. Good-bye.”

The peachick was gone as soon as he’d arrived. Off to the elder’s right he scampered, weaving between creatures, concessions, old pillars, fast from the wake of confused voices left boiling behind him. Those he passed only watched him flee. They knew, as did the elder, that such a peculiar creature might never be seen again. They watched until he disappeared into an alley no wider than the axle of a good oxcart, a passage into the shadows just berthy enough to permit a malleable, underdeveloped youth such as him.

The goat’s last glimpse was that of skinny legs propelling a little white body into the unknown.

“Huh.” The daughter chuckled from somewhere behind. “…strange kid.”

“Mm,” the elder hummed as he rolled out his drawing on the brick sidewalk. “And he wanted us to think he’s a  _cousin_  of nobility? Ridiculous!”

“Pfft, yeah. What a weird name, too. First peacock I’ve met named Leopard…”

“Leopard ain’t his name, Sunshine.”

“…what?”

The ink was at his knees drying, going shiny to dull, soaking slowly but surely into the silk. He looked upon his work; it was the image of a meager peachick, gray beak in white feathers, a round body stood on two skinny legs. Torn pajamas covered in dirt, dull eyes in large sockets. Brows protruding like overgrown reeds. A noble, but clumsy specimen.

Confused, the daughter bent to bring herself close to it.

“Thought you knew,” the elder said. “His name isn’t Leopard. His name is Shen.”

* * *

 

“Did you see that?  _My name is_   _Leopard!_  They actually believed it! How stupid  _are_  these people?”

 Shen’s amusement ricocheted through the narrow passage, wings flat against the stone left and right, feet charting out the length of the dusty alley. Cheng moved ahead of him just a few feet further in and maintained his silence.

“Father and daughter, both of them—they bought it all.  _Imagine that!_  They can’t recognize the Prince when they see him, the fools! …oh, and this disguise… ha-ha, ohhhhh,  _snrk_ —this disguise… now it’s just perfect, isn’t it?”

Cheng, having arrived at a narrowing in the walls, sucked in his chest and grunted. He poked his head through to a small clearing in the buildings. Shen stumbled into him, following close behind in his laughter.

“Should’ve seen the look on their faces… the daughter, she was… ohh—and everyone was watching, and-”

“ _Shut up!_ ”

The wolf halted Shen with a paw and pulled himself back into the passage. Frantic, cursing under his breath, he shot a frightened glance at him and whispered;  _guards_ ,  _bunch of ‘em_.

The guards’ crossing came in heavy footfalls, hooves and paws regimented in their march. From the refuge of Cheng’s crumpled midsection, Shen spied antelope and wolves filing through the clearing. They were at least ten in number, and he almost yelped when he saw them. These weren’t merely the city patrol. He knew the difference. Each soldier carried the sharpest weapons, the best armor. Only the Palace inner circle was so equipped.

Cheng rose when their steps diminished, and with a peek down each end of the clearing he sighed in relief. He then slumped against the wall. “Oh, jeez. Oh, man.”

Shen regained the courage to move and he stepped— _slowly_ —to ensure the party was gone.

“All clear,” he called back to Cheng. “ _Heavens_ , that was a close one. I didn’t think we’d make it out of…”

Shen turned. Cheng sat now with his head in his palms, his body limp and divest of energy. Seeing him in such a sorry state, Shen couldn’t help but feel that deeper troubles were at play. Cheng had always been so  _unstoppable_ —he was uncompromising and giddy and somehow free from all consequences. Now he was thwarted by the smallest inconvenience.

“What a stupid idea,” Cheng said. “All of this.”

Rubbing his neck, Shen sought words of encouragement where he had none. Anything to lighten the mood would have worked, he thought. Although, Cheng’s assessment of the situation was not far off the mark.

“Well, you’re right,” he said. “This wasn’t the best idea. But, you know- it’s been fun, hasn’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter, doesn’t make a difference. We’re being separated either way. You said it yourself.”

Shen stifled a laugh. “Oh, please. If you had the least concern about separation, you wouldn’t have snuck in this morning. You’re not  _really_ worried about my father…”

Cheng burrowed his face in his palms and turned away, but Shen caught enough of a glimpse to see his trembling lip, the sad grimace he could not conceal. The peachick was at a loss for words. He was not prepared to console his friend, and it wasn’t a possibility he’d ever considered at length. If the wolf wept, the ocean might as well flow into the Yangtze—no, the sun would sooner rise in the west.

But what could he do? Shen’s first instinct was to remove himself,  _selfish as it was_. Of all things it was aversion he felt strongest. He wanted to look away or run somewhere else, never having to face such an unnatural sight. He wanted to just hit Cheng upside the head and demand that he not weep, that he stop acting like a little girl and change back into himself. For the wolf to drag him into this mess only to fall apart midway was just  _not fair_ , but as Shen would come to believe in the turbulence of his adulthood, nothing ever was nor would it ever be.

The peachick surveyed the clearing so as not to face the wolf, his throat now taught. He told himself he would not cry and wondered what the Soothsayer would have him do, what she might say to the boy. Shen resolved he did not know. The goat and the wolf were closer to him than a lack of common blood would suggest, and yet they hardly ever spoke to one another.

Shen looked to the sky, its council empty, vacuous before him.


End file.
